Photographic Prologue

Fahamu Pecou, Dobale to the Spirit, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 60 1/4 x 48 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. Courtesy Fahamu Pecou

Bisa Butler, Basin Street Blues, 2014, cotton denim, 43 1/8 x 41 5/8 x 4 3/4 in. Courtesy Claire Oliver and Ian Rubinstein

from the Crystal Bridges exhibit, worship in Houston, Texas

from the Crystal Bridges exhibit, church in Mississippi

7 / 10 Deborah Roberts, Let Them Be Children, 2018, acrylic, pastel, ink, and gouache on canvas, 46 1/2 x 141 3/4 x 2 3/8 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, 2019.1

The images above were taken, with permission, at the Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, on April 25, 2022. They come from an exhibition originally organized by the Virginia Museum of the Arts and shared with Crystal Bridges, called The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse. 

"The exhibit examines the aesthetic and musical traditions of southern Black culture in the past century, influences now common throughout the American South and contemporary American art and culture. In an immersive experience that engages multiple senses, The Dirty South spotlights the southern landscape through its musical heritage, spiritual complexity, and regional swagger. The exhibition features works of sculpture, paintings, works on paper, assemblage, textiles, and music as well as ephemera from music culture, including instruments, music videos, costumes, lyrics, and personal effects. Ultimately, The Dirty South creates an engaging opportunity to experience a deeper understanding of the African American South and its undeniable imprint on the history of American art."

The images serve as a prologue to this page and also as an afterward. Lest process theology emerge out of, and speak to, the experiences of the people in the images, it is color-blind, culturally and spiritually impoverished, and inadequate to the needs of our time.

​
​Process Theology in Black Perspective

springboards for reflection 

​

Process theology is in process. It is evolving from a specialty among academics to a popular movement with many voices, articulated in many different ways, with the aim of helping bring about ecological civilizations through the cultivation of compassionate and just communities.  See the vision and mission of the Cobb Institute at the bottom of this page. But the movement will have no future if its voices are primarily European, rationalist, and out-of-touch with the lived experience of people of color, including those with legacies of slavery and colonialism. This is why the articles and interviews on this page are so important. They represent an early stage of process theology when a primary question was: Can this theology be black, too?  Some said yes, some said no. All are valuable as primary sources for a process theology in process, whose future is not yet determined, but whose context is, and must be, context-specific and global, not merely white, western, and European.
​

Underground Rap as Religion: Jon Gil
Making a Way of No Way: Monica Coleman (video)
Process Theology: Guardian of the Oppressor or Goad to the Oppressed: William R. Jones
African-American Religion and Process Theology: Video, Theodore Walker. Jr. and Henry James Young (video)
The Inadequacy of Process Theology to African-American Experience: Thandeka
Process Theology and Black Liberation: Testing the Whiteheadian Foundations: Henry James Young
Hartshorne's Neo-Classical Theism and Black Theology: Theodore Walker, Jr.
​Addendum: Cobb Institute Mission and Vision
​

Underground Rap as Religion

Jon Gil
​

​This work is based on a theological concept inducted into process thought in recent years. This concept is “theopoetics,” or the attaching of an aesthetic nature to the perpetual intercreativity that takes place between God and the universe. In other words, theopoetics asserts that God’s revelation is, in reality, irreducible to fixed dogmas and creatively transforms with the context in which it finds itself. In theopoetics, the revelation of God is continuously reinterpreted in ways that coincide with an ever-changing cultural, historical, philosophical, psychological, socioeconomic, and theological landscape. Theopoetics by its very nature is dialectic. It is an aesthetic conversation between the world and ideas of God, where both are understood to be mysterious and continually progressive, reaching intermittent and incomplete destinations as they endlessly travel through existential phases, phases in which God has a potential new meaning."

The title of the book draws from the Whiteheadian axiom that God’s action in the world is not creative in the sense of making its components. Rather, God’s action is salvific, in that it rearranges the pieces of the world into an amalgam that generates the most positivity for the entities of the universe. God is not a creator, but a savior in Part V of Process and Reality. This is very much like a poet who doesn’t create the words that she uses, but places the words into an aesthetic schematic, which art enthusiasts would call “beautiful.”

It is my contention that the culture of underground rap is an instance in where this poieses of world creating God can be clearly seen. This book looks specifically at underground rap as a creator/re-inventor of ideas of what is considered divine or “ultimate.” It holds that underground rap as a mode of extension of underground hip-hop culture (in a weird channeling of Spinoza) contains its own religiosity in its ability to provide nontranscendent principles of limitation and order as life guides to its adherents. The work of Monica Miller in Religion and Hip Hop (among her other resources) presents me with a framework through which to redefine the category of the “religious” in ways that identify the mode of thought in underground hip-hop that provides a “roadmap to living” (a characteristic attributed to many traditional manifestations of the world religions).

​Gill, Jon Ivan. Underground Rap as Religion (Routledge Studies in Hip Hop and Religion) (p. 169). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

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Making a Way of No Way

Monica Coleman
​

African-American Religion
and Process Theology
​

​​Process Theology and Black Liberation:
Testing the Whiteheadian Metaphysical Foundations

​by Henry James Young
​

​The following article appeared in Process Studies, pp. 259-267, Vol. 18, Number 4, Winter, 1989. Process Studies is published quarterly by the Center for Process Studies. Used by permission. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. Young believes that Whitehead’s conception of God is supportive of liberation struggles because it takes contextualization seriously by making God responsive to actual conditions of the world without resort to divine coercion.
​

The testing ground of metaphysical truths lies in their applicability to what is found in practice or experience. The attempt in Whitehead’s philosophic method is to construct a metaphysical scheme that is consistent with reality. His contention is that the reality being described should not be coerced into conformity with a metaphysical scheme already constructed. His thinking suggests that if the metaphysical analysis and the reality being described fail to conform to each other, then the fault lies in the metaphysics, not in the reality. This requires the metaphysical scheme to be reexamined and revised. In Process and Reality Whitehead argues that all things found in practice, regardless of how simple or complex, must find a place within the framework of metaphysical description. When the description fails to include the practice, it is inadequate and needs reconstruction (PR 13/19).

My task in this paper is to test some of Whitehead’s metaphysical assertions against the experiences of Black Americans. The purpose here is to establish points of contact between process theology and the Black liberation struggle. Is there a link to be discovered between process metaphysics and the world view of Black Americans? If so, what are its implications for constructing a Black liberation theology? Can such a link provide a viable methodological framework capable of enabling us to build on the strengths present in Whitehead’s process metaphysics, while at the same time helping us to push beyond its inherent limitations?

Why must the quest for this link begin with a careful examination of Whitehead’s metaphysical foundations? Oppressed Black Americans and other members of marginalized social groups cannot afford to enter into the discussion with a take-it-for-granted attitude that the Whiteheadian metaphysical foundations are applicable to their experience. The attempt here is to help clarify the viability of appropriating categories from process metaphysics in the quest for Black liberation.

Employing speculative philosophy as his investigative framework, Whitehead seeks to develop a comprehensive metaphysical scheme which is coherent, logical and capable of interpreting every element of our experience. When he uses the phrase, "every element of our experience" (PR 3/4), Whitehead is not referring only to experiences disclosed by modern physics. Rather he is referring to the whole variety of human experiences, including those relevant to aesthetics, all the sciences, values, religion, arts, and so forth.

Whitehead's metaphysical scheme seeks to satisfy the demands of empiricists on the one hand, and the demands of rationalists, on the other hand. He seeks to do justice to the empiricists by developing a theory of knowledge based on experience. And, he affirms the rationalists’ pursuit of the ultimate rationality and coherence of all reality. Using the empirical side of his method, Whitehead seeks to ground his views in what is observable and experiential.

He makes imaginative broad generalities. His method then returns to the observable to test conclusions. Whitehead says, "the true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational observation" (PR 5/7). These conclusions are never final and complete. They are continually being reexamined and revised in light of new data.

The experiences of Black Americans and other oppressed ethnic minority groups can provide renewed observation for testing the Whiteheadian framework. Experience of suffering, poverty, political disfranchisement, economic exploitation, racism, sexism, and other social ills create a different context for appropriating process metaphysics.

Within a few pages it will not be possible to discuss many of Whitehead’s metaphysical categories. I have attempted a more thorough discussion of them in Hope in Process. A Theology of Social Pluralism (HP). In this paper I have selected the following categories for discussion: human experience, God as Fellow Sufferer, and eschatology and liberation.

I. Human Experience

Why is it that the experience of Black Americans and other oppressed ethnic minority groups create a context for renewed observation for testing process metaphysics? Because it makes a difference when metaphysical categories are appropriated in the context of persons whose backs are against the wall (JT 1-20). It makes a difference when persons are on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder looking up. They have a unique experience which needs to be attended to by process theology. This brings into focus the first problem which I want to discuss.

This problem is the continued unwillingness of the majority white social group to be intentional about including the experience of cultural forms of Black Americans in the interpretation of the meaning of human experience. W. E. B. DuBois in his classic volume, The Souls of Black Folk, refers to the issue as a type of "double consciousness." By it he means that white America yields no true self-consciousness to Black Americans. His contention is that Black Americans are coerced into viewing their own experiences through the experiences of whites. This creates a type of double-consciousness; it leads to a "sense of always looking at one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (SBF 16-17).

The issue is that in America and throughout the global village whites have projected their cultural forms as the normative criteria for defining the nature and meaning of human experience. Consequently, throughout their history in America Blacks have always found themselves coerced into conformity to the normative definition of human experience imposed on them by the white majority social group. They always feel this sense of twoness or double consciousness, being Black and American, having two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled dimensions, "two warring ideas in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" (SBF 17).

This perpetuates an extreme identity crisis for both whites and Blacks. For whites it sustains a false sense of superiority. For Blacks it imposes a false sense of inferiority. Both can be characterized as fallacies of misplaced cultural identity. It patterns the experiences of individual Blacks and whites after an extended crisis in intergroup social relations. It makes for distortions of the real. Whereas when Whitehead coined the phrase, "Fallacy of misplaced concreteness" (SMW 58), he was referring to the irreducible bits of matter present in the Newtonian mechanistic theory of nature, when applied to social systems it acquires added significance.

Can process metaphysics provide an alternative approach to interpreting human experience which paves the way toward overcoming this problem? Taking into consideration certain points of caution, I think it can. Whitehead’s philosophy is based on a pluralistic metaphysics. And, following the Whiteheadian notion that our metaphysics should be descriptive of what is found in practice, I think it is necessary to have consistency between a pluralistic metaphysics and a pluralistic view of social reality.

Whitehead’s pluralistic metaphysics properly accounts for the uniqueness and individuality of each existing thing in the world. Whitehead avoids the pitfalls of monistic philosophies, where the individuality of each act of experience is ultimately dissolved into an underlying unchanging substance. This avoidance is important to Black Americans and to other oppressed ethnic minority social groups, because the background of social pluralism in America has been the prevailing notion that "the melting pot" and "Anglo-Saxon conformity" constitute the two accepted models of assimilation and acculturation.

Such models do not create genuine pluralism; rather they perpetuate unity in conformity, meaning that the experiences of ethnic minority social groups are unacceptable when they fail to coincide with the normative criteria of human experience prescribed by the white majority social group.

Whitehead’s doctrine of pluralism avoids the pitfalls of dualism, where an acute disjunction between interiority and exteriority is made. When applied to social theories dualistic philosophies make social pluralism impossible. Dualistic philosophies individualize reality, whereas social pluralism requires social relatedness. In social philosophies dualism sustains in society a sense of cultural insulationism and isolationism. Process metaphysics sustains genuine social pluralism, because it has the idea of social relatedness and interrelatedness at its core. In dualistic philosophies reality is perceived as individualized, independent. and separated, whereas in process metaphysics reality is perceived as socialized, interdependent, and interwoven.

Whitehead’s doctrine of social immanence enabled him to realize that both individuality and social relatedness are inextricably interwoven into the fabric of each act of experience. While it is true that each actual occasion has its own identity, it is not possible for any instance of experience to exist in separation and isolation from others. All instances of experience involve and express interrelatedness.

This is to say that the appropriate methodological framework for interpreting human experience in a manner that points in the direction of overcoming the problem of cultural normativeness is a metaphysics of inclusiveness. Whiteheads philosophic method succeeds at this point.

However, a point of caution is that we must avoid using the experience of any particular socio-cultural group as normative for all the rest. Why do philosophers, theologians and other theoreticians influenced by process metaphysics need to be particularly cautious about this problem?

Because of a basic presupposition characteristic of evolutionary theory; namely, the notion that the upward trend of the creative process is more complex and therefore is the normative guideline for interpreting reality. Not only is this idea present in Whitehead, but elements of it can be found in Teilhard de Chardin, Hegel, and other evolutionary theists. Because of the presupposition present in evolutionary theory, Whitehead used consciousness as the touchstone of human experience. Based on an analysis of human experience, he makes broad generalizations about all other experiences in the world.

Whitehead’s panpsychism does enable him to work toward avoiding the problem of anthropocentricism; in appropriating his metaphysics we have to avoid thinking that cultural patterns are inadequate because they do not conform to a certain approach to "consciousness" as defined by the white majority social group.

For example, traditionally, such designations as "marginalization," "underdevelopment," "disadvantaged" social groups, and so forth have referred to cultural patterns of those who are not members of the white majority social group. If we continue to allow this type of mentality to influence our approach to human experience, whether we function within the context of a dualistic, monistic, or pluralistic metaphysics, we will continue to perpetuate the problem of cultural normativeness.

II. God as Fellow Sufferer

Although Whitehead’s idea of God functions as an element of metaphysical analysis, it grows out of experience. Unlike Aristotle, who makes God the exception to all metaphysical principles, Whitehead is careful to avoid making a generic distinction between God’s experience and other experiences. God, therefore, he contends. ". . . is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification" (PR 343/521). This is not to say that God and other experiences in the world are different in all respects. This is not to say that God is not distinct and unique. One example is that God is a nontemporal actual entity forever participating in the ongoing flux of temporality. Whereas all other experiences after reaching actualization perish, God continues to function in the midst of the perpetual perishing of all creatures.

Here we can see how Whitehead’s vision of God has relevance for Black Americans and other oppressed minority groups. It takes contextualization seriously. God is not to be perceived as an abstract remote deity insensitive to the deepest religious feelings which grow out of experiences of pain, suffering, death, and human agony. In fact, God feels or experiences the sorrow, discontent, misfortunes, disappointments, and the pain of oppressed social groups.

In order for such an idea to have relevance in the world, it is necessary to overcome the age-old problem of divine impassability. Whitehead’s dipolarity succeeds in doing so.

Whitehead’s dipolar conception of God contains both a primordial and consequent nature. Although, on the one hand, they are distinct, on the other hand, these two natures are merely poles of one actual entity. The primordial nature refers to the mental pole and is characterized by the fact that God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging. Also, God’s primordial nature functions as the principle of concretion, meaning that God is the basis of order in the world. In God’s primordial nature God is the reservoir of all possibilities in the world.

The consequent nature refers to the physical pole and is characterized by the fact that God is finite, temporal, and responsive. God’s consequent nature refers to God’s concreteness in the actual world. All events in the world, after experiencing self-actualization become objectified in God. In this sense, God receives the world. God’s primordial nature is passive and God’s consequent nature is active. God is affected directly by all of the happenings in the world. Such an intimacy with the world of creaturely experiences makes both contextualization and liberation possible. The point of departure for liberation theology is where the oppressed find themselves. Process metaphysics provides a framework for such a point of departure.

Also important to this discussion is the view that God doesn’t impose or coerce reality into conformity to a goal, purpose or direction which is inconsistent with its own uniqueness. It is true that God provides the initial aim for every finite occasion, which means that God originates the process toward self-realization. But God’s nature is described in Whitehead’s metaphysics as a persuasive agency. This means that genuine freedom and self-determination are inherent within each emerging creature in the world.

One of the great needs of Black Americans is that of self-determination and freedom. The beginning point for this is for Black Americans and other oppressed minority groups to set their own agenda of liberation. Whitehead says that God ". . . shares with every new creation its actual world" (PR 345/523).

Once the agenda of liberation emerges from the context of each oppressed minority group and properly interfaces with God’s highest possibilities, then it becomes objectified or integrated into God’s consequent nature. In other words, the agenda for liberation and self-actualization must emerge from the authentic context of the oppressed. God’s role and function is to provide the highest possibilities to oppressed minority groups as they seek to liberate themselves. God facilitates, influences, supports, and sustains creatures toward liberation by constantly keeping the highest possibilities before them.

The suffering aspect of God is significant in relation to liberation because it points to God’s role as infinite, caring, loving, redeeming, reconciling agency affecting social change in the world. The many forms of systemic suffering and social malfunctioning in the world which continue to oppress Black Americans, women, Africans, American Indians, and other social groups, cannot be ascribed to God. In process metaphysics every creature possesses self-determination, self-realization and self-creativity. God and humanity are co-partners and co-creators in the process of liberation. Systemic suffering and social malfunctioning, therefore, are caused by human greed, self-centeredness, an illusion about power and control, racism, sexism, imperialism, ethnocentrism, and other factors.

So, then, the old traditional theodicy question, How can a good and loving God permit suffering in the world?, is overcome by reconceptualizing God’s role and function in the world. God is the source of good, not of evil. Although God assists in determining the nature of reality by initiating the "subjective aim" of each emerging actual entity, because reality is self-creative the human being must assume responsibility for systemic suffering and social malfunctioning in the world.

The problem with the Whiteheadian proposal at this point is not whether the reality of God has sufficiently resolved the problem of suffering in God’s own Being. I think Whitehead succeeds here. But what about God’s relation to the suffering in the liberation struggle of the actual world? What clues do we get from God’s experience of suffering for appropriation into social structures? Here I think we must seek to push beyond the limitations of Whitehead’s metaphysics.

In God’s consequent nature Whitehead contends, ". . . there is no loss, no obstruction" (PR 346/524). As creatures in the world perish and become objectified in God’s consequent nature, they become a part of God’s unison of immediacy. Whitehead’s insight here is that the problem of suffering is ultimately resolved by God’s perceiving of the creative advance in a manner that retains mutual immediacy. This mutual immediacy consists of God’s eternal presence which forever participates in the world of perpetual flux. It is what Whitehead means by "everlasting." Through this mutual immediacy God prehends or feels every experience in the world, including the sufferings, sorrows, failures, triumphs, and brings them into a universal harmony of experience.

This universal harmony continues to allow novelty in the world; it never perishes and it remains the existential context of God’s continued relevance to the dispossessed and disinherited. Whitehead’s point is that God possesses tender love and care for the world. God works at keeping anything from being lost. In such capacity God functions as savior of the world.

In the realm of infinite possibilities God overcomes suffering. Whitehead says, "God’s role is not the combat of productive force with productive force; of destructive force with destructive force, it lies in the patient operation of the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization" (PR 346/525-6). But in terms of the existential reality of increasing racism, sexism, political disfranchisement, economic exploitation, and so forth, we need to find viable models and social strategies for holding people accountable for perpetuating systemic oppression. To take the position that somehow the social malfunctioning and many forms of systemic suffering are continually being overcome in God’s consequent nature comes short of speaking effectively to the immediate need of victims of oppression. The immediate need is to move with an unprecedented pace toward the transformation of social structures.

Whitehead’s proposal suggests that the power of rationality expressed through God’s eternal presence in the world possesses the capacity to influence humanity toward the realization of the good. In other words, God saves the world through the overwhelming power of rationality, rather than by force.

Isn’t it necessary to integrate within process metaphysics the notion that the transforming power of God which comes as the result of salvation, regeneration, and sanctification is essential for humanity to deal effectively with the problems of suffering? If we use the overpowering rationality of God alone as the clue to resolving the problem of suffering in the world, then, we miss a fundamental element which has always been basic to Christian theology, namely, the recognition that both reason and faith are essential for salvation and liberation.

Whitehead, of course, was influenced heavily by Plato. In fact, he said that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. I mention this to point out that in the Platonic tradition the self-actualization of the good is done solely through reason. But human greed, pride, selfishness, self-centeredness, and alienation make it necessary for Christian theology to combine faith and reason in the quest for transformation and reconciliation. Reason alone is inadequate.

A point of great social value in the Whiteheadian vision is that it helps liberate us from our fixation on the immediacies of our particular existential plight. In other words, the panoramic vision of God is the big picture. When we think about it and then seek to look back on our particular circumstance, sometimes such a vision gives a new sense of hope, optimism and release. On the other hand, we have to be careful to avoid exonerating people for creating oppressive social structures. This requires us to reconsider some of our basic metaphysical presuppositions in light of their social implications.

The claim of the rationalism to which Whitehead adheres is that reality is ultimately rational. God sifts through the discords, ambiguities, and turmoil of existence and creates a sense of universal harmonization. Whitehead’s vision shows how in order to work creatively toward human liberation we need to relate the Divine vision to the context of oppressed people. The beatific vision, the panoramic perspective, or the total picture is never available to finite individuals. People can only see the light which comes in their respective paths. Therefore, we must find ways for our sense of the panoramic vision to have impact on the context of oppressed persons.

III. Eschatology and Liberation

One way or the other any discussion of liberation in the context of Christian faith must include questions related to eschatology. Here I think process metaphysics continues to make a valuable contribution to the discussion. Process metaphysics is based on an organic worldview, which has deep and abiding affinity to both the African roots of Black Americans and the Judeo-Christian heritage. It is my contention that a theology of Black liberation also must embrace an organic worldview, not only because it is consistent with the authentic roots of Black Americans but because it also represents something fundamental in the Biblical tradition.

This organic worldview suggests that a discussion of liberation must include an integration of both spiritual and physical dimensions. A basic element in Whitehead’s vision of God’s function in the world is to combine permanence and flux in a manner that makes the values contained in the notion of heaven available to the human condition on a continuous basis. When we separate permanence and flux it leads to the notion of a God who is basically static, ". . . with eminent reality, in relation to an entirely fluent world, with deficient reality" (PR 346/526). But an integration of these dimensions provides the context for an agenda of liberation, including the transformation of every dimension of life, environmental, political, social, economic, spiritual, and so forth. As Whitehead puts it, what is done on earth becomes objectified in God’s nature, and God’s heavenly resources are turned back in the world (PR 349-51/530-33).

The unfortunate tragedy in the Judeo-Christian heritage was a tendency to baptize the otherworldly aspect of Platonic thought as Christian theology. Although Plato in a real sense was a fountainhead for Whitehead’s metaphysics, his work becomes a corrective to the Platonic dualistic worldview. The Platonic worldview made a disjunction between the spiritual and the material. Mind and matter, interiority and exteriority, the within and the without, are ontologically separated in Plato’s worldview.

The dualistic worldview persisted throughout the history of Western philosophical and theological discourse, reaching a point of culmination in Cartesian dualism. Not only is the dualistic orientation a distortion of reality, its otherworldly eschatological perspective is not conducive to liberation. In fact, it works contrary to liberation because as experienced and practiced in the West it puts its emphasis on preparation for life beyond this world, rather than seeking fulfillment in the world.

The organic worldview integrates the spiritual and material dimensions of reality into the recognition that they are two distinct manifestations of one and the same process. They are two distinguishing aspects of one reality. In the African worldview, for example, there is not a separation between these two realms. They are integrated together. John S. Pobee in Toward an African Theology makes the point that religion in the Akan society is an "all pervasive" phenomenon (TAT 43-52). And John S. Mbiti in African Religions and Philosophies points out that because religion permeates all aspects of life in African society, there is no separation between the sacred and the secular, the religious and non-religious, or the spiritual and the physical (ARP 1-7).

The integration of the spiritual and the material becomes essential for oppressed persons to attain a true sense of freedom. As we think about the future, we must raise the question, whose future are we speaking about? The future cannot continue to consist of a world dominated by the white male. Liberation begins with a redistribution of resources. The quest for liberation is being experienced with a deep sense of urgency throughout the world. No longer can the white male continue to dominate and control ethnic minority groups. A liberationist approach to eschatology includes the empowerment of oppressed persons to take charge of their own lives.

Whitehead’s vision of reality suggests that freedom is something that is built within the structure of each occasion in the world. In other words, freedom is something inherent in each emerging actuality. In terms of metaphysics, this serves as a viable point of departure for oppressed persons, suggesting that in the quest for liberation oppressed persons must claim their freedom. To claim freedom means becoming intentional about eradicating the social ills which mitigate against the inherent freedom which is ours. In this sense, freedom is dynamic and not static.

It is not enough, for example, for one to say that the death and resurrection of Christ has set us free, or to say that because freedom is inherent within one’s nature it is not necessary to work for it. Because God functions as co-partner in the quest for liberation, oppressed persons must assume responsibility for their own freedom. They cannot depend on the oppressors to liberate them. They must feel the compulsion to liberate themselves with the help of God. While listening and responding with a sense of urgency to the liberation agenda of the oppressed, oppressors must work at overcoming the illusion of power and control.

We must avoid thinking that ultimately the future lies in the hands of God and that somehow God will insure victory. The thought that God will not allow humanity to destroy itself perpetuates a false sense of security. God’s role is not to coerce humanity into conformity with God’s ultimate plan. God insures humanity continued participation in the struggle for liberation. And, God’s redemption and grace are inexhaustible, meaning that God never abandons humanity because of its sinfulness. God’s love and patience are infinite. This vision of God serves as the basis of eschatological hope. It is not idealism or escapism, nor is it false optimism; rather, it represents a realistic approach to eschatological hope. It approaches the future as a great opportunity and a great risk. My hope is that victims of oppression, including Black Americans, Africans, women, American Indians, Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Latin Americans, Asian Americans, and others will begin to assume leadership in the quest for liberation. I mean the type of leadership which offers new possibilities for the future. Years of oppression should offer a new vision of humanity. If we respond positively to this new sense of humanity, then we will work with intentionality toward the realization of genuine social pluralism -- the type of pluralism which avoids racism, sexism, and other social ills which perpetuate forms of social injustice. Efforts that work contrary to realizing genuine social pluralism make the future a threat, rather than an opportunity.

References

ARP -- John S. Mbiti. African Religions and Philosophies. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1970.

HP -- Henry James Young. Hope in Process: A Theology of Social Pluralism. Philadelphia: Augsburg/Fortress Publishers (Forthcoming).

IT -- Howard Thurman. Jesus and The Disinherited. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press. 1965.

SBF -- W. E. B. Dubois. The Souls of Black Folk. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1961.

TAT -- John S. Pobee. Toward An African Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979.

​​Hartshorne’s Neoclassical Theism and Black Theology

​by Theodore Walker, Jr.

​The following article appeared in Process Studies, pp.240-258, Vol. 18, Number 4, Winter, 1989. Process Studies is published quarterly by the Center for Process Studies, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Used by permission. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. Both black and process theologies are defined in large part by their opposition to or protest against certain features of classical Western theism.

In this essay I shall offer some critical reflection upon Charles Hartshorne’s neoclassical conception of God from the perspective of black theology.

I. Black Theology and Classical Theism

The term "black theology" is here used to refer primarily to those contemporary African-American and native African systematic theologies which understand that the Christian witness to the modern world is more than less in accord with the liberation agenda of "black power" (BTBP). Accordingly, black theology understands that a liberating answer to questions pertaining to the circumstance of oppression and the struggle for freedom is essential to the Christian witness.

This understanding of Christian witness yields a particular vision of God which has been summarily formulated by James Cone and others under the conception of God as "God of the oppressed" (BTBP). When black theologians speak of God as God of the oppressed, we do not mean merely that God is present with, related to, worshipped by, or somehow involved with those who are oppressed. This would be to understate the matter. From the perspective of black theology, to speak of God as God of the oppressed is to affirm that God actually experiences the suffering of those who are oppressed. Moreover, black theology knows, from the data of human experience, that the experience of suffering from oppression entails a desire to be liberated from such suffering. Hence, it follows that the God who experiences the suffering of the oppressed also desires their liberation.

Black theology has its deepest rootage in the experience of enslaved and oppressed Africans, and in their appropriation of the witness of scripture; but not in the philosophical and theological traditions of the Western academy and in its medieval and Greek forebears. The essentially non-Western rootage of black theology is often concealed by the fact that most African-American communities of worship wear the labels of Euro-American Protestant denominations. It must be remembered however that African-American denominations are not "protestant" in the sense of having been born in protest to alleged Catholic abuses; instead, African-American denominations are protestant in the very different sense of having been born in protest against oppression by Euro-American protestant denominations. For example: the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is called "Methodist Episcopal" largely on account of the fact that white members of the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church of New York City were so oppressive of their black members that in 1796 about thirty African-Americans, under the leadership of James Varick, separated themselves from that white congregation and formed an independent denomination (AMEZ). Most other African-American denominations and racially separated churches were born of similar protest, and typically, African-Americans retained the name of whichever Euro-American denomination or church they happened to have stood in protest against. As such, when African-American congregations are referred to by Euro-American denominational titles, one must understand that, ironically, such titles signify differences more than similarities. Black theology’s rootage in the tradition of that other great protest, schism, and reformation which produced the racially separate African-American congregations determines that it is not at all committed to that predominantly white-Western theological tradition which Hartshorne calls "classical theism."

To be sure, black theology is defined in considerable measure by its protest against the prevailing Western theological tradition. History has taught us that classical Western theism is quite capable of abiding peaceably with, and even of being very supportive of, such oppressive activities as the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of native Americans. It is characteristic of black theology to be unforgivingly critical of any theology which fails to affirm that God favors the struggle for liberation. If God is conceived so as not to favor our struggle for liberation, then God is thereby conceived so as not to experience fully our pain and suffering. Such a conception of God is contrary to the Christian witness to God’s suffering as indicated by the cross, and it is contrary to the vision of God as that utterly unsurpassable Friend whose love is perfect and all-inclusive. The logic of black theology is this:

first) The most basic existential datum of black theology is that the experience of suffering from oppression entails or produces a desire, and inevitably a struggle, for liberation.

second) The most basic religious datum of black theology is that human experience becomes divine experience, that our suffering becomes divine suffering, in that God actually experiences our experience of humiliation, pain, and suffering.

third) Therefore, the most basic theological affirmation of black theology is that God desires and strives to achieve the liberation of those who are oppressed.

To experience suffering from oppression is to desire, and inevitable to struggle for, liberation. Because we know that God actually experiences our oppression, we know that God favors our struggle for liberation. This is as far as can be removed from such classical attributes of God as immutable, totally impassible, wholly other, and unmoved mover. From the perspective of black theology, the prevailing classical Western (white) theism is logically, existentially, and religiously anathema. Insofar as classical theology aids and abets the structures of oppression, James Cone would describe it as the theology of the Antichrist.

We may then begin this critical reflection upon Hartshorne’s "neoclassical theism" or "process theology" with the observation that both black and neoclassical theologies are defined in large part by their opposition to or protest against certain features of classical Western theism. This is an important observation, but one that is somewhat deficient in providing positive information about the status of the two theologies with respect to each other. To say x is contrary to y, and that z is also contrary to y, is to say little about the status of x in regards to z. The opposition between black theology and classical theism, on the one hand, and the opposition between neoclassical theism and classical theism, on the other, tell us little about the status of black theology in respect to neoclassical theism. Thus, it is appropriate that we further the relatively new conversation between black theology and neoclassical theism.1

The purpose of this essay is to advance the dialogue between black and neoclassical theologies by offering several systematic indicators of important similarities and differences. I believe that these indicators will support my general thesis, which is that the African-American conception of God as God of the oppressed is far more in accord with Hartshorne’s vision of God than with those classical Western theologies which are affiliated with denominations and traditions from which African-American congregations have sought to liberate themselves.

II. The Challenge that Black Theology Presents to Neoclassical Theism

At a November 1985 conference on process theology and the black experience at the University of Chicago, William Jones presented a paper in which he observed that process theology emphasizes the unconditional, indiscriminate, and universal character of God’s love in a way that typically fails to indicate that God favors the struggle of the oppressed for liberation from economic, social, and political oppression. Rather than indicating that God sides with the oppressed in their struggle for liberation, process theology seems to place God on everyone’s side; and if God sides with everyone, says Jones, then God effectively sides with no one. Thus, from Professor Jones’ perspective, black theology cannot find process theology acceptable until process theology is able to indicate that God is the God of the oppressed rather than merely that God’s love is unconditional and universal. If neoclassical theism, like classical theism, is unable to present its vision of God in a way which indicates that God favors the struggle of the oppressed, then the neoclassical alternative will be unacceptable to black theology. Furthermore, Jones stipulates that the "litmus test" for compatibility is process theology’s ability to "accommodate counterviolence" (PTGG 17).

In challenging process theology to state explicitly that God sides with the oppressed, and to do so in a way that does not rule out the possibility of righteous counterviolence, I understand Jones to be challenging process theology to explicate the social-ethical consequences of accepting certain metaphysical truths in order that black theology might measure its ethical content against the needs of the struggle for liberation. Broadly conceived, black theology asks not only about the metaphysical status of process theology, but also, and more importantly, can process theology illuminate social-political ethics in a way that contributes favorably to the liberation struggle?

In the fourth chapter of Man’s Vision of God -- "God and Righteousness" -- Hartshorne teaches us how neoclassical theology illuminates ethics in a way that is socially critical and intellectually honest, that is, in a way that is adequate to both ethical and metaphysical criteria. Hartshorne holds that, "In general, the possibility of a theology depends upon the possibility of making our basic conceptions adequate to a supreme instance" (MVG 144). Hence, theology can illuminate ethics when ethics stands in critical relationship to an adequate understanding of the supreme instance and "maximal degree" of divine goodness – "perfect love."

In this chapter Hartshorne refutes the view that there can be no such thing as perfect love, and hence, by implication, that theology cannot illuminate ethics, but rather, "far from being able to illuminate ethics, theology presupposes and merely applies an ethic" (MVG 143). According to this mistaken view, love is thought to be necessarily imperfect because all motivation can be reduced, finally, to self-interest. Hartshorne finds this view to be erroneous in that it neglects the requisite temporal distinctions between a present self and other future selves (including one’s own future self). Hartshorne holds that "the present self never acts merely for itself, but always for some other self (MVG 148). What unites a present self to other selves is "the sympathetic character of imaginative realization" according to which "self and other self are scrambled together in motivation" (MVG 148-150). Thus, for every conceivable self, "the ultimate motive is love, which has two equally fundamental aspects, self-love and love for others" (MVG 151). Where a given individual displays foolish altruism or egoism, it is because self-love and love for others are not given a proper balance; but it cannot be the case that one or the other of these two fundamental aspects is altogether absent. Given, then, the requisite temporal distinctions, and given the social nature of the self, we can see that all motivation is not reducible to sheer self-interest; and therefore, the view that all motivation reduces to self-interest, being false, cannot be used to deny the possibility of perfect love. Hence, the argument against the possibility that theology can illuminate ethics fails.

Furthermore, attending to temporal distinctions and to the social character of reality, Hartshorne discovers that ethics needs a divine memory. Hartshorne reasons that if the past is not in some sense eternally and perfectly preserved, that is, if the past is not immortal, then it follows that in the more or less distant future, it will be the same as if we had never chosen one action as opposed to any other; indeed, it would be the same as if we had never existed at all. Thus, ultimately, the essential ethical view that some choices are better than others requires an eternal reality; otherwise, in the long run, no choice is better or worse than any other.

While ethics needs divine memory, there is, says Hartshorne, no ethical need for divine providence or timeless perfection. In fact, Hartshorne shows that to conceive that God has certain foreknowledge of absolutely every detail, and that God’s perfection is such as to be capable of no increase whatever, is to deny the metaphysically and ethically necessary possibility of temporary values "and with it choice, activity, or purpose, in any intelligible senses" (MVG 159).

Hartshorne finds, then, that ethics is related to theology in that the very possibility of meaningful ethics requires a divine reality which includes the immortality of the past. Moreover, the possibility of meaningful ethics excludes theological affirmations of absolute divine providence and timeless perfection.

After having taught us something about how ethics informs theology, Hartshorne proceeds to teach us how theology informs ethics. In developing a theism which conceives of the supreme instance of goodness in terms of perfect love, Hartshorne argues that this "religious ideal of love" is "not a mere emotional glow toward others," but rather, love is "action from social awareness" (MVG 166). Hartshorne says, "The divine love is social awareness and action from social awareness" (MVG 173). According to the Hartshornean understanding of perfect love, we might interpret the scriptural command -- "Be ye perfect" -- to mean that we are commanded to act from a social awareness that is perfectly responsive to the interests of all others, and for the purpose of promoting the greatest liberty for all. Insofar as we fail to fully sympathize with the interests of others and to act accordingly, our love is imperfect, and we are not fully ethical. Hartshorne says that if ethical means "being motivated by concern for the interests of others, then God alone is absolutely ethical" (MVG 162). Thus, on Hartshorne’s view, ethical status is measured by love, that is, by action from social awareness which takes account of the interests of others. While God alone is absolutely ethical (perfectly loving), we are commanded to be as nearly ethical, that is, as nearly perfect in action from social awareness, as we can. Here, then, Hartshorne’s theological understanding of the supreme instance of goodness gives us the ideal towards which human ethical behavior must aspire.

From the perspective of black theology, it is important to observe that Hartshorne’s account of theological ethics displays a sensitivity which is characteristic of liberation theologies in general. Hartshorne notes that an important ethical objection to classical theism is that it tends toward a faith which disarms criticism of and struggle against predominant social arrangements. Hartshorne describes the propagation of such sentimental faith as "smoothing the path of the oppressor" (MYG 165). In contrast to a view of divine love which does not admit that God sides with the oppressed, Hartshorne holds that God favors the creaturely exercise of freedom up to the point where it becomes excessive and is a threat to the freedom of others to pursue their interests. Hartshorne emphasizes

"the energy of his [God’s] resistance to the excesses of creaturely will at the point where these excesses threaten the destruction of creaturely vitality" (MVG 173).

Thus, the logic of Hartshorne’s conception of divine love is such as to place God decisively on the side of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

In the same chapter, Hartshorne rejects dogmatic pacifism by arguing that the religious ideal of love as action from social awareness "seems clearly to include the refusal to provide the unsocial with a monopoly upon the use of coercion (MVG 173).

Coercion to prevent the use of coercion to destroy freedom generally is in no way action without social awareness but one of its crucial expressions. Freedom must not be free to destroy freedom (MVG 173).

The kind of action from social awareness that is demanded by perfect love is such as must admit the tragic reality that there are people who are genuinely intent upon using their freedom to destroy the freedom of others, and that, under certain circumstances, love itself may dictate that "It is better that many should die prematurely than that nearly all men should live in a permanent state of hostility or slavery" (MVG 173). Difficult though it is for humans with imperfect love, the demands of perfect love may, nonetheless, require that we kill an oppressor with whom we have sympathy. Hartshorne says,

To decide to shorten a man’s life (we all die) is not ipso facto to lack sympathy with his life as it really is, that is, to lack love for him (MVG 168).

To veto a desire is not necessarily to fail literally to sympathize with it; for sympathy only makes the desire in a manner one’s own, and even one’s own desire one may veto, because of other more valuable desires (MVG 166-67).

Violent coercion and sympathy are not mutually exclusive. Thus, Hartshorne concludes that "The logic of love is not the logic of pacifism or of the unheroic life" (MVG 173).

Hartshorne’s theological ethics is consistent with such expressions of black theology which, drawing upon the philosophy of black power, maintain that, under certain circumstances, the oppressed may be compelled to engage in violent struggle against an oppressor. We see, then, that Hartshorne’s theology can be acceptable to black theology insofar as it does not smooth the path of the oppressor by disarming the oppressed, and also in that Hartshorne’s vision of God supports the basic affirmation of all black and liberation theologies -- that God sides with the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

An alternative formulation of the challenge: the God of the oppressed is greater than the universal God of all

The challenge that black theology presents to the neoclassical alternative is sometimes formulated in this way: How is it possible to reconcile the so-called "particular" vision of God as the God of the oppressed (G-of-O) with the so-called "universal" vision of God as the God of all-embracing love (G-of-A)? In more Hartshornean language, the question is this: How does one reconcile the apparently restrictive theological assertion that God favors the struggle of the oppressed with apparently unrestrictive neoclassical assertions -- for example, that God is "the subject of all change?"2 (It is commonly said that the conceptions of God which stress the universality of divine love are incompatible with the conception of God as God of the oppressed, because the latter conception is insufficiently comprehensive. I do not know that Hartshorne, or any other neoclassical/process theologian, has given explicit attention to this matter.)

I trust dialogue between black and neoclassical theology will be helped some-what if I were to offer an African-American perception of the way in which it is possible to conceive without contradiction or confusion that God is both the subject of all change (G-of-A), and the God of the oppressed (G-of-O). That I should care to reconcile G-of-A with G-of-O is typically African-American. Throughout history, from the secret beginnings of the "invisible institution," through the second great schism and reformation up to the present, African-American religion has affirmed simultaneously both conceptions of God.

Frederick Douglass is an illuminating example. Douglass (1817-1895) was an African American Methodist Episcopal Zion (AME Zion) clergyman who was born into slavery and who escaped from slavery and joined the abolitionists’ struggle as an internationally known orator, fund raiser, newspaper publisher, and editor. Douglass wrote a letter to the man who had once been his slave master in which he said that God is the God of all, the God of master and slave alike, that God is "our common Father and Creator" (MBMF 427). In the same letter Douglass wrote that God is – in Douglass’s own words – "the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed"(MBMF 422). Here, and in other writings Douglass expresses a traditional African-American commitment to both G-of-A and G-of-O.

The question of how to reconcile indiscriminate and all-embracing love with siding with the oppressed is one that Douglass gave attention to in his May 12,1846 speech at Finsbury Chapel in Moorfield, England. On this occasion, Douglass was asking "the people of Britain" to join the struggle against American slavery. In order for his appeal to be successful Douglass knew he would have to reconcile a certain pious regard for the well-being of slave owners with supporting the slaves’ struggle for liberation. The audience at Finsbury Chapel would want to know how it was possible to side with the oppressed without being against the oppressor. Douglass argued that they should Support the abolition of slavery not only because slavery was not in the best interest of African slaves, but also because slavery was not really in the best interest of slave owners and Americans in general.

In his life as a slave who was passed from one owner to another in the manner of chattel property. Douglass saw first hand how becoming a slaveholder could alter one’s existence. Here are two examples that Douglass offers on this point:

Mrs. Auld . . . a most kind and tender-hearted woman . . . on entering upon the career of a slaveholding mistress . . . When I went into their family, it was the abode of happiness and contentment . . . . Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience cannot stand much violence (MBMF 152-53).

A change had taken place, both in Master Hugh, and in his pious and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy and bad company on him, and the influence of slavery and social isolation upon her, had wrought disastrously upon the characters of both (MBMF 183).

Douglass summarized the influence of slavery upon the slaveholders by saying that "slavery can change a saint into a sinner, and an angel into a demon" (MBMF 142). Douglass maintained that slavery had a corrosive influence upon the "character" and general well-being of the slave owner and of the whole slaveholding community. and that therefore the British could be appealed to "as strongly by their regard for the slaveholder as for the slave, to labor in this cause" (MBMF 417). There is here an implicit distinction between the apparent self-interest of the slaveholder and the real self-interest of the slaveholder which allowed Douglass to maintain that it was genuinely in the best interest of the slaveholder that slavery be abolished.

We might add also that another corrosive influence upon the character of the oppressor is the kind of self-deception which an oppressor is driven to engage in in order to maintain his/her self-image. One has only to examine statements by slaveholders to the effect that their activity was for the purpose of Christianizing Africans who would otherwise spend eternity in hell to see the tortuous self-deceptions to which slaveholders were subject. I hold a similar regard for statements by white South Africans who seek to convince us that apartheid is in the best interest of colored and black peoples, as well as for statements by American entrepreneurs who argue that they are invested in South Africa for the purpose of enhancing the standard of living for black workers. Douglass is correct. Insofar as the oppressor is driven to such colossal acts of self-deception, oppression does indeed corrode the character of the oppressor.

A similar testimony is provided by another African-American abolitionist -- William Wells Brown (1814-1884). Brown’s life parallels that of Douglass in that he too was born into slavery and escaped to become an abolitionist, writer, and orator, who gave nearly a thousand lectures favoring the abolitionist cause in England, Ireland, Scotland. Wales, and France. Like Douglass, during his career as a slave, Brown was the chattel property of several families, and he also recorded that slavery had a corrosive influence upon the character and well-being of the slaveholders and their families. In particular Brown noted the damaging influence of slavery upon the children of slave owners. To this end, Brown quoted from a 1788 letter by Thomas Jefferson in which Jefferson said,

The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions; and, thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.3

William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, and many others have observed that slavery was contrary to the genuine self-interest of slave holders, their families, and the surrounding community. Thus, the abolitionists maintained that siding with the oppressed in their struggle for liberation is also a being for, rather than against, the genuine well-being of the oppressors and the community of oppression.

That siding with the oppressed can be a being for the well being of the oppressor has obvious theological implications. The God who is "the God of the oppressed" can also be "our common Father and Creator" (G-of-A) in that siding with the oppressed in their struggle for liberation is genuinely in the best interest of all.

We can represent these theological reflections in the form of two deductions which show that, given the reality of oppression, the G-of-A must be the G-of-O.

first deduction:

1) God experiences all experience.(G-of-A)

2) African-Americans have suffered from oppression.

3) To suffer from oppression entails a desire to be liberated

from such suffering.

4) God experiences the suffering of the oppressed.

5) Therefore, God desires the liberation of the oppressed.

(G-of-O)

second deduction:

1) God experiences all experience. (G-of-A)

2) Anglo-Americans have been oppressors.

3) Being an oppressor entails a corrosion of one’s character and well-being as well as that of one’s community.

4) God experiences die corrosion of the oppressor’s well being.

5) Therefore, God desires that the oppressor cease being an oppressor. (G-of-O)

There are instances when it might seem that God does not desire the liberation of the oppressed. For example, according to the book of Exodus, God might choose to "harden Pharaoh’s heart" so as to make conditions more oppressive. But, again, according to the Exodus account, this is done for the sake of contributing, in the long run, to the struggle for liberation. Sometimes it is better in the long-run that certain short-run interests be sacrificed. This is somewhat akin to the New Testament analogy according to which an eye might be sacrificed for the sake of liberating the whole body. Hartshorne’s theism, also, allows for the possibility that God might choose to sacrifice some particular interests for the sake of other more inclusive interests, and that such sacrifice does not imply that God fails to sympathize with the interests which are sacrificed (MVG 166). According to Hartshornean and to biblical theism, then, what may appear to be God’s failure to sympathize with the interests of the oppressed is never that; and furthermore, when God sacrifices some interests in favor of other interests, it is always for the sake of promoting liberty for all. Thus, while our perception may, on account of its limited scope, indicate otherwise, nonetheless, the truth is that God never fails to promote liberty for all. In the words of Douglass, God is "the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed."

It is only by inserting a contingent statement -- given the reality of oppression -- that an unrestrictive theological statement -- say, for example, that God is the subject of all change -- can come to entail what I wish to call a "restrictive yet necessary statement" -- that God is the God of the oppressed. Strictly speaking, that God is the God of the oppressed is not "necessary" in the sense in which metaphysical necessity is opposed to contingency; however, given the reality of oppression, that God be G-of-O is not a factual contingency in the sense that God could fail to be the G-of-O. In that God is the subject of all change, if oppression is among the changes to which God is subject, then God cannot fail to desire the liberation of the oppressed. But, of course, oppression is a contingent reality. Thus, while strictly speaking, the conjunction of a contingent statement -- that oppression is real -- with a metaphysically necessary statement -- that God is G-of-A -- yields what is technically another contingent statement -- that God is G-of-O; there is a certain undeniable ineluctability about the truth that if oppression is real, then God cannot fail to be G-of-O, which compels me to indicate its ineluctable character by saying that it is "restrictive yet necessary" (and here necessary does not mean metaphysical necessity). This is somewhat analogous to Hartshorne’s language of "hypothetical necessity." In any event, without the insertion of a contingent statement affirming the reality of oppression, it would seem impossible to bridge the gap between an unrestrictive theological assertion and the characteristic and partially restrictive assertion of black theology -- that God favors the struggle of the oppressed for liberation.

The status of a strictly metaphysical assertion, taken alone, or only in combination with other strictly metaphysical assertions, is a matter about which black theology and most other theologies of liberation have shown little interest, and this is so for the best of reasons. The obvious reason is that strictly metaphysical assertions are, in regards to ethics, singularly uninteresting. If, according to neoclassical metaphysics, a properly metaphysical assertion is one that is affirmed by every actual and every conceivable fact,4 then it would follow that nothing actual or conceivably actual is contradicted by a metaphysical assertion so that, in the words of Ivan Karamazov, "all things are lawful." But if, on the other hand, the metaphysical assertion that God is the subject of all change is conjoined with an assertion of the reality of oppression, then we can deduce that God favors the struggle against oppression, and that there are theological reasons for holding that some things are lawful and some not lawful. It is at this point that neoclassical metaphysics becomes relevant to ethics generally, and to the liberation agenda of black and liberation theologies in particular.

The principles of method outlined by Charles Hartshorne in Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method are entirely consistent with our liberation agenda. For example, Hartshorne says, "Philosophy has two primary responsibilities: to clarify the nonempirical principles and to use them, together with relevant empirical facts, to illuminate value problems of personal and social life" (CSPM xiv). Thus, the central challenge posed by black theology is that neoclassical metaphysics consider the realities of oppression as among the most important, if not the most important of the relevant empirical facts to be used together with non-empirical principles for the illumination of value problems of personal and social life. The varied circumstances of oppression have been too seldom among the relevant empirical facts considered by neoclassical theism. From the perspective of most of the world’s people, the reality of suffering from oppression is not one fact among a great many others; rather, it is the fact of social existence to which so many others are subordinate. The challenge is, then, not a contrary view, but rather, a stimulus to follow through with the neoclassical logic in ways that further illuminate the problems faced by the world’s oppressed majority.

Perhaps the most important theological point in this essay is that neoclassical theism, according to its own principles of method, must -- given the reality of oppression -- join black theology in affirming a certain priority for the conception of God as God of the oppressed. While, on the one hand, many critics of black theology regard the vision of God as God of the oppressed as an insufficiently comprehensive vision of God, Hartshorne’s theism, on the other hand, must insist that the partially restrictive and partly contingent vision of God as God of the oppressed is more inclusive than any abstract vision of God as merely the universal God of all. In Chapter V -- "Some Principles of Method" -- of Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, Hartshorne argues that, in accordance with the principles of formal logic, "the necessary cannot include the contingent, and that the total truth, assuming there are both contingent and necessary truths, must be contingent" (CSPM 84). In the same way that "Becoming includes Being, as the contingent includes the necessary" (CSPM 84), black theology maintains that its vision of God as G-of-O includes the abstract vision of God as the G-of-A, while the converse cannot be true. Therefore, the vision of God as G-of-O is greater than and altogether inclusive of the vision of God as the G-of-A. Insofar as the logic of Hartshorne’s neoclassical theism requires us to affirm the priority of G-of-O over any wholly abstract vision of God, neoclassical theism is to this considerable extent more in accord with black theology than are most Western orthodox and neo-orthodox theologies.

III. The Challenge that Neoclassical Theism Presents from the Perspective of Black Theology

In one of his more recent books -- Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes -- Hartshorne summarizes the neoclassical challenge to traditional or classical theism. Here, Hartshorne identifies "six common mistakes about God" which taken together describe what he calls "classical theism." Hartshorne understands classical theism to be characterized by mistaken conceptions of (1) divine perfection, (2) divine omnipotence, (3) divine omniscience, (4) divine sympathy, (5) immortality, and (6) revelation. (1) The classical conception of divine perfection is faulty in that it concludes wrongly that in order for God to be perfect, God must therefore be conceived as unchangeable/immutable in every respect. (2) The classical conception of divine omnipotence is found to be faulty in that it concludes that in order for God to be omnipotent that whatever happens must be divinely caused to happen. (3) The classical conception of divine omniscience is wrongly conceived in that it holds that whatever happens must have been eternally known in every respect by God. (4) Divine goodness is misconceived in that God is thought to be good, yet unsympathetic. The classical misconception holds that God’s unsympathetic goodness is such that God’s goodness is "like the sun’s way of doing good, which benefits the myriad forms of life on earth but receives no benefits from the good it produces" (OOTM 4). (5) Classical theism errs in conceiving of "immortality as a career after death" (OOTM 4). (6) And finally, classical theism is marked by an erroneous conception of infallible revelation according to which, "The idea of revelation is the idea of special knowledge of God, or of religious truth, possessed by some people and transmitted by them to others" (OOTM 5).

The first four of the mistakes are of the same class in that each violates "the principle of dual transcendence" by failing to conceive that God is not only transcendent and unsurpassable as an "agent" with power to be the cause of events, but also that God is transcendent and unsurpassable as "patient" in having a uniquely excellent capacity to be an effect. According to Hartshorne’s principle of dual transcendence, God is unsurpassable as both agent and as patient. Hartshorne conceives that God is not only eternal, but eternal and temporal; not only spiritual, but spiritual and physical; not only infinite, but infinite and finite; not only abstract, but abstract and concrete; not only active, but active and passive; not only independent, but independent and dependent; not only simple, but simple and complex. This is a "dipolar" conception of God. Classical theism, on the other hand, accepts that only one of any pair of such metaphysical contraries applies to God, and it thereby, in violation of the principle of dual transcendence, produces a monopolar conception of God. Hartshorne attributes this consistent violation of the principle of dual transcendence to the fact that classical theism has placed too much faith in Greek philosophy, and to a Western prejudice according to which absolute independence along with the power to the cause of events is regarded as a superior attribute while relativity and the capacity to be an effect is mistakenly regarded as an inferior attribute." 5

It is clear that black theology does not share the classical Western prejudice against relativity (After all, nothing can be more supremely relative -- "surrelative" -- than the view that God experiences all experience.), and we have also seen that black theology is not much indebted to Greek philosophy. (1) Unlike classical theism, black theology has never conceived of divine perfection in such a way as to entail that God is wholly immutable. (2) Unlike classical theism, black theology has never conceived divine omnipotence in a way that entails that whatever happens is entirely determined by God. On the contrary, black theology has consistently and explicitly rejected such a conception of divine omnipotence. (3) Unlike classical theism, black theology has never conceived divine omniscience in a way that denies that the future is at least partly open. (4) And finally, black theology has steadfastly opposed the view that divine goodness is unsympathetic with its view that God is maximally sympathetic. Thus, in regards to the four theological mistakes which Hartshorne describes as various violations of the principle of dual transcendence owing to a faulty Greek inheritance and a Western prejudice which favors absolute independence over relativity and partial dependence, the Hartshornean foil touches black theology hardly at all. We may then pass over the whole group of four in order to consider the remaining two -- (5) immortality and (6) revelation -- from the perspective of black theology.

Mistake #5

Hartshorne characterizes the classical conception of after-death as that which recognizes only two possibilities: either death reduces us to a mere corpse with no enduring meaning or value, or, we survive death to experience a new career of heavenly or hellish existence "in which our individual consciousness will have new experiences not enjoyed or suffered while on earth" (OOTM 4). Classical theism opts for the second alternative in the form of conventional views of personal immortality. Neoclassical theism offers a third possibility according to which we do not survive death in the form of having an after-death career of new experiences, but according to which this lack of an after-death career does not reduce us to nothing because there is, in Whiteheadian terminology, an "objective immortality of the past." While this third alternative denies personal immortality in the conventional sense, there is, nonetheless, an objection immortality of the past insofar as every past event is a permanent item in the subsequent present. Our existence is, then, permanently and perfectly preserved in ultimate reality.

It might seem that the Hartshornean denial of personal immortality would be a direct challenge to African-American religion and thus to black theology, but, upon careful reflection, we shall see that this is not altogether the case.

We may begin with the observation that African-American religion is not characterized by a univocal commitment to the conventional vision of personal immortality, especially as formulated in the classical Greek conception of immortal souls. One has only to attend to funeral services among African Baptist and African Methodist congregations to see that this is so. For example, it is very common to find three clearly distinct and somewhat incompatible views of after-death affirmed at a single funeral in an African-American church. Very commonly one will find that a minister will, in the course of a single funeral ceremony, affirm each of the following: (1) that death is the inevitable way of all the earth, that we must all return to the earth – "dust to dust, ashes to ashes" -- that, in short, when you’re dead, you’re dead; (2) that the deceased is now at home with God, that her/his soul has gone to its eternal home -- hopefully heaven, but perhaps hell; and (3) that the deceased will rest here, asleep, in the grave until that great day of judgment when Gabriel will blow a trumpet whereupon the dead will be resurrected in the body to face the last judgment. The first view is akin to ancient Hebrew visions according to which there is no personal immortality. The second view is akin to the classical Greek vision of an immortal soul being liberated from imprisonment in the physical body. And the third view is akin to an early Christian (Pauline) vision of the general resurrection or resuscitation of previously deceased bodies based upon the model of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Typically, all three visions of after-death are affirmed by African-American Christians.

Obviously, African-American Christianity has given no systematic attention to this matter, otherwise it could not conceivably affirm three incompatible visions of after-death. Moreover, to my knowledge, black theology has given no systematic attention to this matter either. What is unambiguously clear, however, is that African-American funeral rites reflect an unshakable religious conviction that ultimate meaning and value rests "in God’s hands," and that while we do not know the programmatic details, we remain certain the value of our past life can be entrusted to God’s care. This much is clearly affirmed, while the conventional notions of personal immortality, especially as rendered in the classical Greek vision of immortal souls, represent programmatic details which are not univocally affirmed; for indeed, such unknowable details are not essential to the fundamental religious conviction that we can entrust our deceased to God’s tender loving and eternal care. This last fundamental religious conviction is, to my knowledge, as much as black theology in North America has ever affirmed, and there is nothing essential in this which is overturned by preferring objective immortality to personal immortality and immortal souls.

Traditional and ancient African religions are resources which are essential to black theology, and since existence after death is a topic about which African religions have much to say, we shall now consider their contribution. At this point black theology may rightly criticize Hartshorne’s treatment of existence after death. Hartshorne’s analysis in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes is defective insofar as it recognizes only three possibilities -- the two identified by classical theism and the third which is Whitehead’s doctrine of the objective immortality of the past. These are not the only possible or actual views of existence after death, and we are licensed to criticize Hartshorne for speaking as if they were by Hartshorne’s own criteria of evaluation. In Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, Hartshorne provides us with a list of seven criteria by which a metaphysician can be evaluated, and the fifth of these refers to "an ability to grasp diverse possible or historical perspectives on problems (why should we trust his choice of a view if he does not know what views have been or can be held?)" (CSPM 41). Thus, we turn now to consider a historical perspective on the problem of existence after death which Hartshorne has not considered -- the traditional black African vision.

In African Religions and Philosophy, John S. Mbiti addresses the question of what remains after one’s physical life by drawing upon a traditional African distinction between (1) the living. (2) the "living dead," and (3) the "completely dead," or as some others prefer to say, the "dead dead." While there are significant philosophical inconsistencies inherent in Mbiti’s description, he still succeeds in making the essential point that among traditional Africans a deceased individual, while physically dead, is not thought to be reduced to a mere corpse. Such a one is appreciated for the difference that s/he made and for the difference that this continues to make to the surviving community. For so long as the surviving community is conscious of the fact that its existence is, and will be. different on account of its having creatively synthesized the contributions of the deceased and for so long as the surviving community can remember the deceased by name, that person, though physical dead, continues to live in that his/her previous existence continues to make a difference to and is remembered by the community; and thus, such a one is classified as "living dead." One of the conceptual flaws in Mbiti’s description is that he describes this as a "state of personal immortality" (ARP 32). It is clear that Mbiti does not really mean "immortality" because he goes on to tell us that the "living dead" do eventually die insofar as sooner or later, perhaps generations later, the surviving community will forget the contributions and even the name of the deceased person at which time s/he becomes "completely dead"/dead-dead. Thus, there is, according to traditional African thought, existence after death -- that of the living dead, but not such as can be properly described as "personal immortality."

Mbiti describes the traditional African conception of time by using two Swahili words -- "Sasa" and "Zamani." Traditional Africans conceive that events move backward in time from the Sasa period of time into the Zamani period. The Sasa period of time is the period of conscious living. The living participate in Sasa self-consciously while the living-dead participate insofar as the surviving community remembers their names and the differences made by their having lived. When the living-dead die, that is, when they become dead-dead, they disappear from human consciousness as they move backward into a realm of eternal reality called "Zamani." Mbiti describes the process in this way:

Death becomes, then, a gradual process which is not completed until some years after the actual physical death. At the moment of physical death the person becomes a living-dead: he is neither alive physically, nor dead relative to the corporate group. His own Sasa period is over, he enters fully into the Zamani period; but as far as the living who knew him are concerned, he is kept "back" in the Sasa period, from which he can disappear only gradually. Those who have nobody to keep them in the Sasa period in reality "die" immediately, which is a great tragedy that must be avoided at all costs (ARP 208).

It is important to note that while Zamani is a realm beyond the reach of human remembering, it is not a realm of unreality. Thus, not even the dead-dead who have moved back into the Zamani period are reduced to utter nonreality. While it is unfortunate that the living-dead die, it is nonetheless true that the fact that they were once among the living makes an ineluctable difference, albeit an invisible difference, to the existence of those who are presently living and to all subsequent reality. In this sense, Mbiti rightly refers to the Zamani as a realm of "collective immortality" when he says that, "the living-dead do not vanish out of existence: they now enter into the state of collective immortality" (ARP 33). Death is then, another instance of the more general way in which all history and all events move backward in time "from the Sasa period to the Zamani, from the moment of intense experience to the period beyond which nothing can go" (ARP 29).

Traditional African philosophy, then, offers us a conception of existence after death which does not partake of a mistaken vision of personal immortality. Thus, Hartshorne is quite wrong in saying that, "Only the ancient Jews and some of the ancient Greeks were nearly free from this flight from what, for all we really know, is the human condition" (ARP 32). Given that both the living and the living-dead die, strictly speaking, there is no notion of an immortal career involved with the traditional African conception of existence after death. Moreover, the traditional African perception that events move backward in time from Sasa to Zamani reminds me of Whitehead’s doctrine of perpetual perishing; and also, the perception that all events are preserved in the eternal reality of the Zamani -- "the state of collective immortality" -- reminds me of Whitehead’s doctrine of the objective immortality of the past.

Mistake #6

The last of the six common theological mistakes identified by Hartshorne is a view of infallible revelation which tends to obliterate any distinction between an infallible God and fallible humans. Christian fundamentalism is taken to be the most extreme form of the erroneous claim to possession of an exclusive and infallible revelation. Hartshorne wishes to correct this kind of extreme claim by offering a more moderate view which grants that there are some religious guides which may be regarded as more reliable than most; but given that all such revelations are mediated by fallible humans, no one revelation can be taken as utterly absolute to the exclusion of all others.

Black theology has never been fundamentalist, but there are some theologians who have argued that at least some black theologians tend to be overly Barthian in their exclusive focus upon the "special revelation" of Christ to the neglect of other "general revelations" about God. Deotis Roberts, for example, says that "the ‘exclusive’ Christocentrism of Cone is inadequate" (BTD 41). (In fairness to James Cone we must observe that in recent years he has developed a progressively more inclusive approach to theology which has included dialogue with Third World, feminist, Asian, traditional African, and other Christian and non-Christian perspectives.) Roberts recognizes that black theology is now being done in a post colonial, post Barthian, multicultural and interethnic context which requires new dialogical encounters with traditional African, Third World, and other theological perspectives. Accordingly, in Roots of a Black Future: Family and Church, Roberts draws heavily upon traditional African resources to develop his vision of the black church as an extended family, and in Black Theology in Dialogue he dialogues with South Korean Minjung theology and with Jewish liberation theology. Charles Long, a black historian of religion, has long sought to widen the scope of black theology so as to include serious dialogue with African, Islamic, and other non-Western and traditional religions. And more recently, Jacquelyn Grant, Henry Young. Archie Smith, Thandeka, and other African-Americans have sought to increase dialogue between black theologians and process theologians. Here and in numerous other instances it is clear that black theology is willing to engage and employ traditional African and other non-Christian resources in ways which indicate that, on the whole, black theology does not believe that it has possession of an exclusive and wholly infallible revelation of God.

Black theology’s tendency to avoid extreme exclusivist conceptions of the "special revelations" of Christianity is partly determined by its appropriation of the traditional African vision of "general revelation." Gwinyai Muzorewa quotes with approval a fellow African -- E. B. Idowu -- as saying, "There is no place, age, or generation which did not receive at some point in its history some form of revelation" (ODA 9). Additionally, it has been well documented that a monotheistic conception of ultimate reality is indigenous to almost all of traditional African culture, and that it is highly probable that traditional African theism, like Judeo-Christian and Islamic theism, has its historical genesis in the monotheism of a black pharaoh of ancient Egypt -- Iknaton -- --who was the first person known to have popularized the religious conviction that there is one, and only one, god. It is also among the black Africans of ancient Egypt that one finds the earliest conviction that God can be manifest and revealed in human incarnations. And perhaps, therefore, it is no mere coincidence that according to ancient Hindu religions, God became incarnate in the form of a black man -- Krishna (the very name Krishna means "the black one"). Therefore, ancient African and traditional African resources have determined that black theology would appropriate Christian revelations in ways that do not entail extreme fundamentalist claims to exclusivist particularity.

Another Mistake

Another of the classical Western notions that is challenged by Hartshorne is what I call the Western conception of the atomic individual. In Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method Hartshorne says, "Our whole Western tradition is warped and confused by the concept of individual taken as ultimate" (CSPM 190). Hartshorne understands the philosophical conception of the individual taken as ultimate to be an unfortunate consequence of an erroneous "substance theory." According to neoclassical metaphysics, there are, strictly speaking, no enduring substances. Rather than speaking of individuals, things, and substances, metaphysical exactness demands that we speak of "event-sequences or Whiteheadian ‘societies"’ (CSPM 204). Hartshorne’s philosophy of "event pluralism" allows that "highly-ordered sequences of events" which normal discourse abstractly calls a self or individual to be properly recognized as a society of events participating in a larger society of events. Thus, Hartshorne opposes the classical Western conception of the atomic individual as ultimate with a social conception of the self, and indeed, with a social conception of all reality.

Black theology, insofar as it draws upon traditional African resources, must side with Hartshorne against the classical Western conception of the atomic individual. This is so because the traditional African conception of human existence is primarily social rather than individual. Again, John Mbiti is our teacher. He says:

In traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except corporately. He owes his existence to other people, including those of past generations and his contemporaries. He is simply part of the whole. The community must therefore make, create or produce the individual; for the individual depends on the corporate group . . . . Only in terms of other people does the individual become conscious of his own being, his own duties, his privilege and responsibilities toward himself and towards other people. When he suffers, he does not suffer alone but with the corporate group; when he rejoices, he rejoices not alone but with his kinsmen . . . . Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: "I am, because we are: and since we are, therefore I am" (ARP 141).

Mbiti describes this as "a cardinal point in the understanding of the African view of man" (ARP 141). Mbiti’s point is buttressed by another native African theologian, Gwinyai H. Muzorewa, who says, "Most African scholars agree that in traditional religion humanity is to be conceived as ‘being in relation"’ (ODA 17).

Black theology agrees with Hartshorne against classical Western thought also insofar as black theology appropriates a traditional African view of the cross-generational character of ethical responsibility. The cross-generational character of African ethical thought is a consequence of its social conception of human existence. John S. Pobee teaches us in the "African World View" that the basic unit of African society is the family, and that the family "consists of the living, the dead, and the yet-to-be-born" (TAT 49). Thus, according to the traditional African vision, a person is not defined as an atomic individual, but as a member of an extended social community that stretches across generations -- past, present, and future. The ethical implication is that moral responsibility is not confined to consequences which obtain for only our contemporaries in the present generation. A member of African society has a moral responsibility in regards to past generations to venerate the ancestors; a moral responsibility in regards to the present generation to consider the well-being of his/her contemporaries throughout the community; and a moral responsibility in regards to future generations to create conditions which serve the well-being of those who are called "the beautiful ones" by Ayi Kwei Armah in his classical novel -- The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.

From the perspective of those who see ethics in such cross-generational terms as never to neglect the well-being of the not-yet-born, nothing is more strikingly characteristic of Western systematic ethics than its failure to concern itself with the beautiful ones. Typically, Western ethics, on account of its atomic individualism, is governed by considerations which extend not much beyond the immediate difficulties of a single generation. This is, in fact, one of the reasons that Western ethics has been so unable to deal adequately with long-term ecological difficulties. In contrast to the classical Western neglect of the beautiful ones, there is the Hartshornean theory of "contributionism" which, like traditional African thought, maintains that, given a social conception of human existence, "the rational aim of the individual must in principle transcend any mere good of that individual" (EA 188). Hartshornean contributionism emphasizes the need to contribute to future life, that is, to the well-being of the beautiful ones.

IV. Black Power and Neoclassical Thought

It is a historical fact that the philosophy of black power is one of the resources which has shaped black theology (BTBP). Insofar as black theology remains consistent with the philosophy of black power, it cannot but welcome a metaphysics which conceives that freedom has a metaphysically necessary aspect. Hartshornean metaphysics conceives that freedom is inherent in all existence. For Hartshorne, to be actual at all is to be an instance of creative synthesis, and this means to have power to be partially determinative of self and others, as well as to have the capacity to be partly determined by other selves. Thus, insofar as Hartshorne conceives that freedom, power, and creativity are necessary aspects of all existence, neoclassical thought can be received as a metaphysical foundation for the philosophy of black power.

The philosophy of black power insists that, given the reality of oppression, there will be struggle against oppression. One of the founders of the contemporary philosophy of black power is Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). Ture says that no matter how overwhelming the might of the oppressor, it is in the very nature of the people that they will struggle and struggle and struggle for as long as they are oppressed until at last they achieve their liberation.6 Vincent Harding’s history -- There is a River -- emphasizes the inevitability of the African-American struggle for liberation. From Harding we learn that while the meaning of liberation and the character of the struggle are variable, the fact that there will be struggle against oppression is a constant. Thus, for the African newly chained to the deck of a ship anchored at a West African harbor, the meaning of liberation and the character of the struggle are very different from that of the African-American who, three generations later, like Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, must consider how best to conduct an abolitionist campaign. We might add that the meaning of liberation and the character of the struggle were yet and again different for young Huey Newton (co-founder of the Black Panther Party) as be lay hand-cuffed and under armed guard even while in surgery as the result of being shot by two policemen in 1967. Thus Vincent Harding, Kwame Ture, Winnie Mandela, and many others have spoken in accordance with the philosophy of black power in maintaining that where there is oppression, there will also be some form of protest and struggle for liberation.

The late Howard Thurman once described the necessary aspect of the struggle for liberation by using an analogy from nature.7 Thurman recalled that on one occasion during his childhood in Daytona Beach, he happened upon a tiny green snake crawling along a dirt path. In the mischievous way that is typical of a boy child, he pressed his bare foot on top of the little snake. Immediately, the little snake began to struggle to free itself. Young Thurman felt the tremor of the snake’s struggle as it vibrated up his leg and through his body. Thurman reasoned that it is divinely given to the nature of all creatures, even to little green snakes, to struggle and protest against oppression.

The necessity of struggle against oppression can also be described through the use of neoclassical resources.8 According to such resources, it is inevitable that the oppressed will struggle for liberation. Moreover, it is characteristic of black power philosophy to insist, with Hartshorne, that, under certain conditions, those who support the struggle may rightfully engage in armed resistance to oppression.

Black power philosophy, and therefore black theology, can find neoclassical metaphysics acceptable also, insofar as each perceives that powerlessness is contrary to the just demands of any people for fully human existence. The agreement between black power and neoclassical philosophies can, therefore, be symbolized by transforming the black power slogan -- "Power to the People" -- into a more neoclassical formulation -- Creative Synthesis to the People; and, conversely, the philosophy of creative synthesis may be understood as a metaphysical affirmation of the social ethical imperative to empower the people.

References


AMEZ -- Bishop William J. Walls. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Reality of the Black Church. Charlotte, NC: A.M.E. Zion Publishing House, 1974.

ARP -- John S. Mbiti. African Religions and Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books, 1979.

BO -- Ayi Kwei Armah. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. New York: Collier Books, 1969.

BTBP -- James H. Cone. Black Theology and Black Power. New York: The Seabury Press, 1969.

BTD -- J. Deotis Roberts. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987.

CSPM -- Charles Hartshorne. Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method. London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1970. La Salle: Open Court, 1970.

DR -- Charles Hartshorne. The Divine Relativity. A Social Conception of God. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948.

EA -- John B. Cobb and Franklin I. Gamwell, Eds. Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

LP -- Charles Hartshorne. The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics. La Salle: Open Court, 1962.

MBMF -- Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Arno Press & the N.Y. Times, 1969.

MVG -- Charles Hartshorne. Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1964.

ODA -- Gwinyai Muzorewa. The Origins and Development of African Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.

OOTM -- Charles Hartshorne. Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984.

PT -- William R. Jones. "Process Theology: Guardian of the Oppressor or Goad to the Oppressed? Insights from Liberation Theology." A paper presented at a conference on process theology and the black experience at the University of Chicago in partnership with the Center for Process Studies and Meadville/Lombard Theological School, 9 November 1985.

RBF -- J. Deotis Roberts. Roots of a Black Future: Family and Church. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980.

TAT -- John S. Pobee. Toward an African Theology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979.

TR -- Vincent Harding. There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.


Notes


1Note J. Deotis Roberts’s call for black theology to increase its dialogical activity in BTD.

2See chapter eight -- ’The Subject of All Change (Cosmological Argument)" -- in MVG.

3From Lucille Schulberg Warner’s From Slave to Abolitionist: The Life of William Wells Brown, New York: Dial Press. 1976.

4 "Metaphysical truths may be described as such that no experience can contradict them, but also that any experience must illustrate them" (LP 296).

5 The Western prejudice against relativity is discussed in Hartshorne’s DR. Here, Hartshorne shows that the relative includes within itself, and exceeds in value, the nominative or absolute "as the concrete includes and exceeds the abstract" (ix).

6 Here I am paraphrasing from Kwame Ture’s speech at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas of 23 October. 1986.

7 Howard Thurman narrated this story from his youth on the occasion of his visit to Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, during the spring of 1978.

8Again, this is not strict metaphysical necessity; rather, it is what cannot fail to be the case given the reality of oppression.

​​Process Theology: Guardian of the Oppressor or Goad to the Oppressed

​by William R. Jones
​

​The following article appeared in Process Studies, pp. 268-281, Vol.18, Number 4, Winter, 1989. Process Studies is published quarterly by the Center for Process Studies, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Used by permission. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock. The author assesses process thought from a liberation theology perspective, challenging the claim by process theologians that process and liberation thought are compatible.

I

Background and Context

Several preunderstandings inform my approach and participation in this welcome dialogue between process and liberation theologians.

First my understanding of the context of this journal issue. We are engaged in a self-conscious effort to enlarge the dialogue between process theology and liberation theology. This constitutes, for me, phase two of the conversation. Phase one was, as Gene Reeves aptly describes it: "Liberation theology from a Process Philosophy Perspective" (PLT 92) Because we recognize possible limitations and errors in this approach and the research conclusions it spawned, phase two is advanced as a corrective to its albeit tentative conclusions.

I also feel that a common goal -- a search for truth and justice -- unites us. Likewise, the common spirit that unfettered dialogue, marked by candor and searching criticism from our rivals, and even our enemies, serves our own self-interest in this search.

This essay is an interim assessment of phase one. An interim assessment has several dimensions that we need to highlight as background for identifying the purpose, method and outline of what follows.

An interim assessment is first a criticism. Like all criticisms it employs a measuring instrument, a yardstick or critical apparatus that is assigned a normative status and then used to judge some object. In an interim assessment, the critical apparatus operates like Janus, bi-directionally. Here, it peers backward to the provisional conclusions of phase one, identifying shortcomings and errors in light of the critical apparatus. Given its forward bearing, the critical apparatus converts into a new method and approach to the dialogue that seeks to avoid the previous errors.

With this preliminary understanding as background, let me identify my purpose and general approach to the dialogue in more detail.

The Coming Debate: Phase Two

Liberation theology is the new kid on the theological block. Its entry has prompted the older and established schools of theology, like process theology, to assess their compatibility with its gospel and mission of esp1 liberation for the underclass, the wretched of the earth. For purposes of brevity, this general issue will be called the compatibility question. The general purpose of this essay is to critically analyze process theology’s initial or phase 1 response to this question.

The compatibility question can be posed in a number of different ways. Is process theology a theology of, for and by the oppressed or the oppressor? What kind of esp praxis, strategy and institutions do its theological norms legitimate or justify? Does the content of process theology’s ethics and esp policy, particularly its priorities and strategies for social change, reflect its esp origin and context of the white, Western upper-middle class world or has it evolved "a system of universal applicability" (PLT 92), an authentic transcultural theology that transcends the restraints of gender, race and class?

In the final analysis, as these questions show, the compatibility question is a critical assessment of a theology’s quotient for esp liberation and its potential as an instrument and inspiration for social justice.

To answer these questions, process theology has audited its theological posits and critically assessed those of liberation theology. The following citation summarizes the findings:

Can the God to whom Cone and other liberation theologians point be affirmed by process theology? Can the Whiteheadian understanding of God be helpful in affirming the God of the oppressed? Increasingly, process thinkers suggest that it can. (GOG 191)

Cobb’s conclusion is even more explicit:

I see no problem for one whose social location is close to the poor to be a liberation theologian who appropriates the basic categories of process thought. Indeed, I believe that those few liberation theologians who have seriously studied process theology have profited from doing so . . . There is nothing in process categories that is inherently white, North American, or middle class. (PCL 127)

As these citations indicate -- and they could be replicated ad nauseam, e.g., the reported consensus of the Xavier Conference -- process theology’s initial audit affirms its merit as a viable, if not enviable, framework for a theology of liberation. I will call this the compatibility claim.

Process theologians advance the compatibility claim in several ways. For some, process theology is a parallel or alternate model for the theological and moral goals of liberation theologians. For others, the basic insights of liberation theology are correct, but incomplete and, accordingly, must be supplemented from the theological resources of process thinkers. Still others reach the conclusion that there are fundamental defects in liberation theology, and these, too, can be corrected or avoided by incorporating selected tenets of process thought. In short, advocates of process theology enter phase two of the compatibility debate with this provisional, but apparently confident, consensus: its credentials -- and possible superiority -- as a liberation theology can be demonstrated.

This, for me, is the most interesting and significant aspect of process theology’s initial research: process theologians raised no serious questions about the theological health of their system that was comparable to the dire and far-reaching impact predicted by Frederick Herzog. "Black theology," he contends, "forces us to raise questions about the very foundations of theology. By the time we have understood what it is all about, we will have realized that the whole structure of Christian theology will have to be rethought" (LT viii).

Even after allowing for esp location or class bias and factoring in liberation theology’s critique of other "oppressor" theologies, extensive therapy or surgery was not prescribed for process theology’s health. There was no theological malignancy, no cancer lurking in its bowels. Modifications in diet -- less metaphysical fat, more esp bulk would suffice.

The purpose of this essay is to challenge these tests results as problematic. I want to defend the hypothesis that process theology’s merit as a theology of liberation has been prematurely overestimated; the question of its liberation potential is still unanswered. I contend that further diagnosis, using more refined and sophisticated tests, will uncover tumors, possibly malignant, that were undetected in the phase one examination.

Accordingly, the contribution of this essay to the dialogue is to analyze the rationale for more discriminating tests. In light of these tests, I will identify some of the "suspicious" theological lumps in process theology that require further lab analysis in phase two. But due to limitations of space, demonstrating if they are benign (high potential for esp liberation) or malignant falls outside of the scope of this essay. Such demonstrations, however, will be the focus of my future contribution to the dialogue.

Let me stress the point that my concern is not to argue that process theology and liberation theology are incompatible in the sense that -- if wedded -- they would constitute a theological union of a Hatfield and a McCoy. Nor is it to suggest that process theology has the terminal cancer of a theology of oppression. Indeed, I have argued that process theology incarnates certain theological categories that are the sine qua non for a liberation theology. However, as we will show, the presence of such categories, e.g., its understanding of the divine freedom relative to human history, is not conclusive for answering the compatibility question. My own preliminary research convinces me of two things: that the more refined tests argued for there will verify the presence of malignant tumors and that process theology’s final score in the liberationist competition will be about six on a scale of ten. All of this is in keeping with its social location.

Phase Two Debate: Predictions

Let me share some of my reasons for this score. First, the intimate linkage between esp context and theological/moral content -- what I term the "cc connection" -- is being increasingly verified as the liberationist litmus test is applied to more and more established theologies that, like process theology, did not emerge from an oppressed community.

Unexpected props for oppression have become visible in liberal theologies like Unitarian-Universalism and humanism to which I belong. Both of these postmodern systems used the grid of prejudice, of direct institutionalized discrimination or the explicit KKK variety of bigotry to respond to the compatibility question. Using this grid, both, like process theology’s phase one audit, passed the wellness test because this overt racism was not present. But when the more precise test of institutional oppression, with its accent on the categories of indirect institutionalized oppression was applied, and when the apparatus of neoracism and its conceptual litmus tests of blaming the victim and quietism were used as a grid, the class determinants of their respective theologies stood out starkly.

Process theology’s fortune, I predict, will be similar -- as the phase two debate proceeds. Specifically, this will come about when liberation theology’s grid of esp oppression is brought into play, when process theology’s theodicy is critically examined for elements of quietism, when its moral and geopolitical policy is probed for facets of gradualism and, when it is forced to respond to more sensitive tests for biases of social location, e.g., its response to the religious and moral legitimation of counterviolence.

But it must be admitted first, that this prediction forces the issue of validation: how to establish liberation theology’s grid of oppression and correlative hermeneutic of social location as a necessary critical apparatus in the debate. I have addressed this issue elsewhere (PML), but several developments internal to process theology also provide the entry point that liberation theology needs for its critical apparatus.

Cobb (PCL) and Reeves (PLT), for instance, have already opened the door for a hermeneutic of social location as a necessary part of correct theological analysis. Equally important is the following citation from Cobb that rank orders social justice according to liberation theology’s own hierarchy of value commitments and thereby establishes the priority of the same hermeneutic.

Process theology has taken as its situation the decline of credibility of Christian belief in the modern world. [But] when [intellectual credibility] is bought at the price of neglecting concrete suffering, caused by the lifestyle in which the thinkers themselves are involved, something has gone profoundly wrong. If Christians must choose between thinking clearly and relating rightly to human suffering, they must choose the latter. The justification for devoting ourselves to the former must finally be that it helps in the latter task. (PCL 128)

All of this pushes us towards our next order of business: a more detailed and focused discussion of the proper assessment criteria for deciding the compatibility question. But first the final factor to take into account as we move into phase two of the debate: the prominence of the apologetic dimension.

The compatibility question is not primarily an issue about responding to a new contender just entering the theological ring; nor is it simply a disinterested exercise in content analysis to uncover theological and moral parallels or identify mutually enriching categories. The compatibility claim also operates as an implicit apologetic for process theology, establishing and demonstrating that it does not "reflect only the values and interests of its social location and sanction the continued oppression of others" (PLT 99). This demonstration, if valid, also enhances its claim for universal applicability. Beneath all of this, then, is the fundamental issue of theological superiority, of qualitative rank order: in short, of power and turf as the backdrop for phase two. My only point here is what I have argued elsewhere (PML): the apologetic intent on both sides must be acknowledged.

Towards a Methodology for the Compatibility Claim

The compatibility question, we recall, assesses a theology’s potential to address "the central problem of modern western culture: how to bring about more just and good societies" (LTJ 112) or in the language of liberation theology: to eradicate esp oppression. But this means that before we can answer the compatibility question we must first address several logically prior questions. Determining the sine qua non for a viable liberation theology must be our point of departure. It will soon become apparent, however, that this line of inquiry calls for precise conclusions about what is compatible with and what is antithetical to the nature and operation of esp oppression. Accordingly, a focus on the prerequisites for the just society requires, at some point, a theological hit list, a specification of concepts to be rejected because they undergird the structures of oppression, or, conversely, a theological shopping list of those categories, attitudes, etc. that must be affirmed if the unjust society is to be reformed.

The purpose of this section is to present for process theology’s critical review a greatly condensed summary of liberation theology’s normative method for addressing the compatibility question. (I have treated this issue comprehensively elsewhere [PML, IFJ] and that analysis forms the background for the present discussion).

To comprehend any feature of liberation theology’s method, purpose, vision of the just society, etc., we must see it as a self-conscious response to a specific context a world where

20 percent of the people control 80 percent of the world’s resources, where two- thirds of the human family goes to bed hungry every night, in which the economic disparities between the rich nations and the poor nations are mammoth, in which there is a clear and ugly equation that goes: rich white; poor = non-white . . . . There is a further equation that goes: affluent white nations northern hemisphere, poor non-white nations southern hemisphere . . . . The context is a history in which the powerful rich minority has been increasing its power and riches . . . and a history in which, with very few exceptions, the church has been on the side of power and wealth. (IFO 120-21)

Two interlocking purposes control liberation theology’s self conscious response to this context. The first purpose, whatever the geographical location may be, is to correct the gross inequalities and imbalances just described: in short, to eradicate esp oppression. The second purpose, which falls outside the scope of this essay, is to establish the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of this activity. In sum, to demonstrate that putting an end to oppression is a moral, spiritual, Christian and biblical imperative. Gutierrez’s definition of liberation theology as "a theological reflection born . . . of shared efforts to abolish the current unjust situation and to build a different society, freer and more human" (TL ix) comes to mind here.

A particular understanding about the nature and operation of esp oppression is the normative grid for these purposes. It is on this understanding, advanced as a set of empirically adjudicated categories, that it formulates its method, rank orders its ethical and social imperatives, constructs its critical apparatus to assess its rivals, and articulates the vision of the just society. Using this operationally defined grid, liberation theology argues that we can determine if esp oppression is present in a manner that moves beyond idiosyncratic and arbitrary judgments. All of this makes its understanding of oppression a central agenda item for the phase two dialogue and the key clue to answering the enigma of compatibility. All of this suggests as well that process theology’s criticism of liberation theology should first address the issue or the accuracy and adequacy of this grid of esp oppression.

Liberation theology’s self-conscious purpose to eradicate esp oppression dictates a precise theological method, namely, antithetical correlation or antithetical fit, in contrast to Tillich’s model of "question -- answer correlation." Or to borrow a medical metaphor, a toxin -- anti-toxin or virus -- vaccine design.

This approach utilizes the grid of esp oppression as a primary norm for theological criticism. Let us focus in more detail on the implications of this method for the compatibility question.

First the inner logic of antithetical fit. Antithetical fit follows from this need: to ensure that my theological norms are not working at cross purposes with my quintessential goal -- here, eradicating esp oppression. Its point of departure is based on the historical and logical analysis of the actual operation of oppression that yields this conclusion: certain concepts and attitudes are essential for the maintenance needs of oppression, e.g., quietism, antipowerism. Accordingly, only certain theological units are serviceable and which are they? Those that, like the anti-toxin, are antithetical to the noxious virus, that destroy or neutralize the conceptual underpinnings of oppression. Thus, a high antithetical fit increases the compatibility quotient. A low antithetical fit maintains the structures of oppression in the sense that x is an ineffective therapy for eradicating oppression; things are left essentially as they are which is the world of fundamental inequalities described above.

Based on the foregoing analysis, liberation theology concludes that within a concrete situation of oppression, there are two and only two broad classes of theologies: guardian theologies that undergird oppression and goading theologies that undermine oppression. Antithetical fit helps to specify the major characteristics of each.

Given this understanding, each and every theological category is to be assessed in light of its antithetical consequence for the operation of esp oppression. Or as Bonino states it: "Liberation theology rereads the history of Christian piety, action and thought through the means of analysis adopted to unmask and expose the ideological misuse of Christianity as a tool of oppression" (DTR 89). To translate this into the terminology of our discussion, process theology’s compatibility claim is suspect until it responds to the questions posed by liberation theology’s phenomenology of oppression.

The liberationist approach also involves a total and comprehensive audit. Like the discovery of the single med-fly, nothing at the outset can be regarded as uncontaminated. Rather, each theological and moral imperative must be provisionally regarded as suspect, as an unwitting and unacknowledged prop for oppression or a fatal residue of the theologian’s privileged class location.

As background for an analysis of other aspects of this approach, let us look at a helpful case study of "antithetical correlation": the critique that Cone and others advanced against agape, often regarded as the heart of Christian faith.

By emphasizing the complete self-giving of God in Christ . . . the oppressors can then request the oppressed to do the same for the oppressors. If God gives himself without obligation, then in order to be Christian, men must give themselves to the neighbor in like manner. Since God has loved us in spite of our revolt against him, to be like God we too must love those who . . . enslave us . . . . This view of love places no obligation on the white oppression . . . . In fact, they arc permitted to do whatever they will against black people, assured that God loves them as well as the people they oppress. (BTL 133-34)

Several points deserve attention here. Agape has a poor antithetical fit because it keeps the status quo situation of oppression intact, i.e., guards it. This, in the Cone critique, is sufficient grounds for scuttling it. In other words, the norm of antithetical fit has coequal authority to metaphysical analysis.

The above mentioned critique of agape illuminates another crucial feature of antithetical fit: esp payout or "praxis verification." "The verification principle of every theological statement is the praxis that it enables for the future. Theological statements contain as much truth as they deliver practically in transforming reality" (PT 76). This means assessing each theological norm in light of the question: Whose esp situation is enhanced if this theological understanding is accepted and translated into policy and practice? Applying this to the current debate, this line of inquiry surfaces: Which group is benefited if agape is defined as the quintessence of Christian faith, or if nuclear disarmament is prioritized over the eradication of the "parochial" oppression on a single continent, or if nonviolent resistance is declared morally superior to counterviolence, etc.? This, obviously, is another technique for determining the extent to which social location defines the content of theology, morality and politics.

As the foregoing theological analysis indicates, it has not gone unnoticed by liberation theologians that metaphysical investigations and conclusions inevitably point back to particular esp interests and commitments. Matters that appear to be solely metaphysical and objective in nature are in fact linked to deeper but seldom acknowledged esp interests. To paraphrase S. Ogden (MFJ), "faith by its very nature inevitably finds expression in political action."2 It is this hidden and usually unconfessed level of subjectivity and political commitment that antithetical fit rivets attention upon.

It is also important to note that the Cone critique is directed against a specific interpretation of agape, the interpretation that applies the imperative universally, rather than contextually, thus making it an imperative equally for the oppressed and the oppressor.

The nuance intended by this contrast is ably presented in Major Jones’ treatment of black ethics.

The ethical question of ‘What ought Ito do’ needs to be divided and an answer to such an ethical question needs to be attempted from both the black and white ethical frames of reference. It may well be that the ethical problems in relation to black and white relations are centered in the fact that those who have traditionally written Christian ethics have heretofore attempted to be too general in their ethical formulations. The ex-slave master and the ex-slave are bound by the same imperative, but the implementations of the same ethical mandate may be different . . . . If he is black, the answer might be one thing; if he is white, it might be quite another. . .

Ethical responsibility vales according to the freedom and power possessed by each of the individual participants in society as a whole. For the socially advantaged white person it means yielding old privileges, accepting new risks, and giving up traditional positions of economic advantage. For the socially disadvantaged black person, it means accepting social status, assuming new positions of power and responsibility, and acquiring a new sense of justice for those whom he had displaced as oppressors. (CEB 16-19, adapted)

The traditional concept of humility also means quite different things when analyzed contextually, rather than universally. Given Philippians 2, the precondition for humility is to be in a situation of superior power and privilege; one voluntarily sets this status aside and lowers oneself to be a Christ unto one’s neighbor. Given this understanding, can the imperative of humility be obligatory for the oppressed since oppressed people do not fulfill the precondition for authentic humility? It should be obvious that this contextual reading shifts the onus Onto the shoulders of the oppressor to be the humble one. Note also what this goading interpretation would also say about "raising oneself by the bootstrap," a philosophy that is commonly advanced as the solution to the oppressed’ problematic situation.

This analysis instructs us that behind even the choice and rank order of theological methods and norms, lies an esp commitment and the telltale sign of one’s social location. The record of science and religion, I contend, is parallel.

In this regard consider Matthew Lamb’s insightful analysis of reason’s checkered history as goad and guardian. Reason, he indicates, was instrumental both in exposing and undermining the barriers to a more humane and just society, but it also served the maintenance needs of oppression (LTJ 106).

To expand Lamb’s account: reason as a metaphysical and moral norm diverts attention away from the esp level that is marked by a gross imbalance and inequality of power, the necessary condition for oppression, to a sphere where all are alleged to be equal. If reason is claimed to be the foundation of moral decision-making rather than power, then the oppressor and the oppressed are on a level of parity, a rank mystification if power rivals reason for preeminence. "Come, let us reason together" is a con game in a context of inequality of power.

II. Theodicy and the Compatibility Question

It is my contention that theodicy is the controlling category once a theology defines itself as a theology of esp liberation. In this sense, a liberation theology is best interpreted as an extended theodicy. This means, speaking methodologically, that one’s answer to the theodicy question establishes the parameters within which the remainder of the system is corralled and in terms of which internal coherence and the compatibility question are adjudicated. I want to analyze the impact of this insight to illustrate some of the difficulties that process theology will encounter as phase two develops.

The compatibility claim may be premature because process theologians have not sufficiently processed the distinct and different questions that surface from the diverse theologies of liberation. It is becoming evident that liberation theologies pose different questions because they reflect fundamentally different experiences at certain levels. Though similar, racial and sexual oppression, for instance, are not identical in the sense that a single theological category can serve adequately the agenda of different theological masters. A similar understanding should guide us in our assessment of strategies to correct the different varieties of oppression.

Looking at process theology’s compatibility claim from the vantage point of black theology, I find a singular dimension missing: the ethnic factor, i.e., the different nuanced questions that emerge from the diverse theologies of liberation. Black theology, for instance, raises the theodicy question in unaccustomed ways, in terms of ethnic suffering which demands the accommodation of the maldistribution of suffering in particular groups. This concept requires elucidation.

Oppression can be interpreted as a form of suffering. The suffering that comprises oppression is (a) maldistributed, (b) negative, (c) enormous, and (d) non-catastrophic. Let me denominate this type of suffering as ethnic suffering and comment on features (a) and (b).

The suffering that characterizes oppression is not spread randomly and impartially over the total human race. Rather, it is concentrated in particular groups. This group bears a double dose of suffering; it must bear the suffering that we cannot escape because we are not omnipotent and thus subject to illness, etc. It is helpful for explanatory purposes to describe this as ontological suffering, that suffering that is part and parcel of our human condition of finitude.

For the oppressed, however, there is the additional suffering that results from their exploitation and their deficit of power. This, unlike the ontological suffering, is caused by human agents.

If we differentiate between positive and negative suffering, ethnic suffering would be a subclass of the latter. It describes a suffering that is without essential value for one’s well-being. It leads one away from, rather than towards, the highest good.

Our reason for highlighting the category of suffering becomes clear once we understand the linkage between specific attitudes toward suffering and the successful maintenance of oppression. One common strategy to keep the oppressed at the bottom of the esp ladder is to persuade them that their suffering is good, moral, valuable or necessary for their salvation, in short redemptive. To label any suffering redemptive is to preclude a negative label for it and consequently one is not motivated to eradicate it but rather to embrace
it.

Given this linkage between suffering and the operation of oppression, any theology that purports to er adicate esp oppression is severely limited in how it can treat suffering. Not all of the traditional theological treatments of suffering can be utilized for they work at cross-purposes with the goal of liberation. To be precise, the suffering/oppression to be attacked must be defined as negative, that is, of no value for one’s salvation or highest good. It has no moral or soteriological merit. In addition, the suffering must be eradicable. This means that we must establish that the suffering in question is human in origin; it is not caused by or in conformity with the purpose of God or nature. If we are convinced that something is grounded in nature or supernatural, we are reluctant to try to change it; we accept, we conform.

Given this linkage between suffering and the operation of oppression, any theology that elevates redemptive suffering must walk a teflon-coated trapeze wire. Minimally, the advocate of redemptive suffering must supply a workable criteriology that unerringly differentiates the redemptive suffering, i.e., that which is to be embraced and endured, from the negative suffering, that which is to be eradicated. More precisely, we must have a trustworthy yardstick or geiger counter that clearly and distinctly separates redemptive suffering from ethnic suffering, the wheat from the tares. The difficulty of this theological and logical feat will become apparent to anyone who responds to the theological dilemma posed by Albert Camus in The Plague.

Camus’ argument has the following steps: (a) Show that at least some illness in the Judeo-Christian tradition is deserved punishment. (In the novel this is established with reference to the plagues visited upon the Egyptians. This step establishes the possibility that any illness can be deserved punishment. However, the same dilemma can be posed with famines or any other catastrophe.) (b) This step in the argument identifies what actions are appropriate for the Christian if an illness is deserved punishment. If deserved punishment or a form of testing as in the Job story, then we cannot oppose it. To do so would be challenging God’s will and purpose. (c) Accordingly, before we can call the doctor, we must show that our illness is not deserved punishment or divine testing. But how is this accomplished? What are the characteristics that differentiate the illness that is deserved punishment from that which is not? And though our call to the doctor is an affirmation that we know what these characteristics are, who has successfully listed them for inspection?

What are the methodological consequences of this understanding of suffering? In addition to establishing that the suffering is negative and eradicable, a liberation theology must also show that eliminating the suffering in question is desirable, that its eradication does not cause us more harm and grief than its continued presence.

The aforementioned mechanism of oppression should be examined from another perspective: its strategy to remove human choice, power and authority as causally involved in society’s superstructures. To use Peter Berger’s distinction (SC), oppression locates traditional norms and institutions in objective reality -- that which is external to the human mind and not created by our hands -- not objectivated reality, all that is external to the human mind that we did create. Oppression, thus, reduces the conflict between the haves and the have-nots to a cosmic skirmish between the human and the supra-human. The theological paradigm in liberation theology, as we will see, relocates the fray, making it a struggle between human combatants.

With this understanding as background, let me illustrate the variety of process theology that I am challenging here. Addressing the question: "Can the God to whom Cone and other liberation theologians point be affirmed by process theology?" Jay McDaniels answers in the affirmative:

A process theology of liberation will indeed affirm, along with Cone and most liberation theologians, that God is a God of the oppressed . . . that God suffers with the poor and oppressed amidst their suffering and that God is involved in their struggle for liberation. The two natures of the process god -- the ‘consequent’ or receptive aspect, and the ‘primordial’ or active aspect -- provide a context for each of these affirmations.

As receptive, the God to whom process thinkers point is one who feels and empathetically identifies with each event in the world as it occurs. God is a cosmic consciousness in whose ongoing life the world unfolds and to whose life new events are continually added. Worldly happenings are felt in such a way that worldly pain becomes divine pain, worldly struggle divine struggle, and worldly joy divine joy. Just as what happens in the body happens in the mind, so what happens in the world happens in God. In this sense Cone is right to say that God is black. The sufferings of black people are God’s own suffering. In addition, God is red, and brown, and female, and male and young, and old and animal. Where there is suffering and victimization, either of human or non-human life, there is God. God is indeed a God of the oppressed. (GOG 192)

This analysis does not accommodate the nuances of ethnic suffering and its accent on maldistribution. How, in the context of McDaniels’ interpretation, does one establish the rank order of bad and good, of negative and positive that is required to launch a theology of liberation? Putting God on everybody’s side, more or less equally, simply exaggerates the dilemma.

Given this understanding, how does one establish the negativity of the objective inequalities that define oppression in this framework without invoking the anthropocentrism that process theology wants to avoid?

If we look at another dimension of process theology’s theodicy, other questions suddenly appear. It appears that most recent process thinkers adopt some variant of what I term humanocentric theism as the solution to the theodicy question. Humanocentric theism, as the adjective suggests, elevates human freedom relative to the sphere of history; the human is given the status of co-determining power with God, at least up to the eschaton. It also affirms a view of divine sovereignty that extends human freedom to such areas as history and values that once were under the direct sway of the divine, thus refuting the hypothesis: "If God exists, man is nothing; if man exists . . ." (DGL 141). To avoid collapsing humanocentric theism into humanism, it is important to note that the human has the exalted status of co-determining power by virtue of God’s gracious endowment. Moreover, the ground for this endowment is the self-limitation of God’s overruling authority in human history. Thus, the misuse of human freedom clears up the mystery of oppression and removes God’s responsibility for the crimes of human history.

Randolph Miller’s account is representative of this approach.

Not only process thought but most black theologies begin with the assumption that creation is good . . . . Yet it is evident that oppression, evil and suffering are dominant notes of the black experience. This can be accounted for if God is a white racist or an indifferent deity or not a good God. But the assumption is that God is a good God and that He loves all human beings regardless of color. Then why should blacks suffer more than their share, and primarily at the hands of white racists who claim to worship the same God? . . . Process thought can contribute some insights at this point. If God acts through persuasion . . . there is a basis for understanding the sin of oppression . . . . The misuse of freedom is sufficient to account for the entire history of oppression. (PTT 275)

The value of humanocentric theism as an antidote for quietism and oppression is easy to document. (1) It cuts off the theological and moral escape route commonly used by the oppressor. The oppressor can no longer point to anything but the human being as the sustaining force behind the unjust society. (2) Central to humanocentric theism is the belief that "God has no hands but our hands," that "all is in our hands." Until the oppressed accept this belief and, accordingly, see themselves as centers of power and their communities as collective sources of transforming power, it is doubtful that they will become active agents for their own liberation. Nor are they likely to assume responsibility for eradicating their oppression as long as they believe that God will miraculously intervene and release them from the oppressor’s clutches. (3) Further, it effectively delegitimates those unjust structures, already in place, that carry the "divine" stamp of approval. This desanctification, as we have noted, is a sine qua non for esp change.

Several questions can be posed to process theology at this point. Given the factor of ethnic suffering, can one assume that God is good? Are not the interpretations that Miller cites -- God is benevolent, indifferent demonic/evil -- equally probable? Though the position of humanocentric theism accommodates the divine freedom in a manner that prevents making God responsible for the crimes of human history, it does so at the cost of making a demonic deity equally probable. As the divine joker in Bertrand Russell’s eschatological scenario illustrates (FMW), each and every instance of divine benevolence can, with equal validity, be interpreted as a divine misanthropy and malevolence.3

I must confess that the manner in which process theology affirms the benevolence of God over against the option of God as demonic or indifferent, is, for me, blatantly question-begging. Howard Burkle, for instance, purports to show that these options are not equally valid. However, the superiority he assigns to the option of benevolence rests on the question-begging foundation of a stipulative definition. The very idea that God may be demonic, he contends, is "inherently inconsistent and therefore not a possibility at all. God cannot be demonic because ‘God’ means ‘absolute perfection.’ If the dominant universal power is not perfectly good, there is no God" (GSB 77).

It would also appear that the logical and theological maneuvers that avoid God’s responsibility for the crimes of human history have several undesirable consequences: any appeal to the future becoming of the divine as preeminent events of liberation is ruled out; even more important, we are left in the dark about God’s character as demonic, indifferent or benevolent. Granting freedom to humans for example, is logically and theologically multievidential. Ultimately, this divine "grace" tells us nothing about whose side God is on or about the divine intent for the future of the human species and its oppressed communities. In what sense can we speak of a divine intent or telos in human history beyond the granting of freedom to humanity, a freedom that is acknowledged to be multivalent, an equal ground of being for good or evil?

Given the insights of humanocentric theism, we are also pushed to ask what it means to advance God, the transcendent, as the ground for the just society? Does it mean more than the claim that the transcendent is both the ground for human freedom/autonomy to operate as moral creator and foundation of the world in which this freedom is exercised? Or does it mean that ultimate reality sponsors, and thus guarantees, the ultimate triumph of specific activities in human history? That is, once humanity is given the status of moral creator, does ontological priority -- i.e., the transcendent -- still establish moral priority? It seems clear that the species of human freedom endorsed by humanocentric theism precludes, at the very least, any immediate movement from ontology to ethics, from the "is" to the "ought," without the intermediate operation of human evaluation. Is this an area where process theology ultimately grounds itself on a question-begging norm?

III. THE COMPATIBILITY CLAIM: FINAL REFLECTIONS

With the foregoing analysis as background, let me treat briefly by way of outline some of the topics that the coming dialogue should address. First some of the analyses and criticism of liberation theology that process theology should revisit for greater accuracy.

1. The question: Is liberation theology the gospel according to Mark or Marx? identifies one problematic interpretation from phase one, the linking of liberation theology and Marxism. This question ponders the source of liberation theology’s worldview and understanding of oppression. Is the source more sociological than theological, more phenomenological than biblical, or to make plain what usually lurks behind questions of this type: Is liberation theology more Marxist than Christian?

Developments in biblical studies permit at least these tentative conclusions. The genetic linking of Marxism and liberation theology is ill-advised. The model of oppression derived sociologically or phenomenologically coheres remarkably well with the biblical model of oppression. The coherence is precise enough to make the case that a Marxist analysis is not a necessary foundation for a liberation theology; a biblical scaffolding can work equally as well.

Jose Comblin correctly identifies liberation theology’s basic position to which its critics must respond: a biblically grounded -- and therefore, an internal criticism -- of traditional theology. "In some sense, all the sources of the theology of liberation or freedom are biblical. On going back to the traditional [theologies], I am always struck by the modest importance attributed to freedom. It is even more amazing when contrasted with the prominence of freedom in the Bible . . . . The rediscovery of freedom by theology is a return to the Bible . . ." (CNS 41).

2. Criticisms and interpretations that label liberation theology’s accent on the esp dimension as political, not theological, or as Marxist, not biblical, are also ill-advised and betray, I would argue, an unacknowledged class bias I have in mind here such descriptions as: (a) "[Liberation theology’s] commitment to sociopolitical resistance is as real as commitment to the gospel" (TLT 239), rather than "commitment to socio-political resistance is commitment to the gospel ." (b) "Process thinkers have been perhaps" [note the qualification here which is absent from the parallel description of liberation theology] "too much occupied with the solution of broad metaphysical questions connected with the creation of a new God-world relationship and too little concerned with the day-to-day problems of people in contemporary society. Liberation theologians, on the other hand, have been so involved in their group’s struggle for freedom and equality that they have effectively neglected the deeper theoretical implications of their new praxis orientation to theology" (Fl 73).

Undergirding this criticism of liberation theology is the correct perception that no politics is metaphysically presuppositionless, but omitted is the equally correct counterpart that liberation theology advances: no metaphysics is politically presuppositionless. Critiquing liberation theology for an a-metaphysical bias while overlooking its own a-political stance appears to be an instance of not seeing the beam in one’s own eye.

Such descriptions of liberation theology also give the false picture that liberation theology is generated by narrow and selfish special interests whereas process theology’s circle of concern reflects the broader common good. Such descriptions and criticisms are valid only if the theological approach attributed above to process theology is regarded as normative and not expressive of a privileged class location, a position that the very existence of liberation theology calls into question.

3. Space does not permit a description of other major units of liberation theology’s critical apparatus of antithetical fit: quietism and anti-powerism. Their use as critical tests has been articulated elsewhere. Here, I want only to identify some of the constituent elements of process theology that I will examine in future dialogues as instances of quietism or anti-powerism: B. Loomer’ s concept of two powers, the charge that liberation theology is guilty of anthropocentrism, ecological insensitivity, and that it "may be falling heir to a God is on our side mentality, [and] reintroducing in a different form the discredited extra ecclesiam nulla salus doctrine" (PLT 97).

4. The next litmus test of process theology’s compatibility claim is already on the horizon: its response to liberation theology’s religious and moral legitimation of counterviolence. Is an ethic of persuasion a new version of political quietism (RLC) that maintains the status quo of the oppressor’s gross imbalance of power and privilege?

References


BTL-- James Cone. A Black Theology of Liberation. New York: Lippincott, 1970.

CE – Major Jones. Christian Ethics for Black Theology. Nashville: Abingdon, 1974.

CNS -- Jose Comblin. The Church and the National Security State. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979.

DGL -- Jean-Paul Sartre. The Devil and the Good Lord. New York: Vintage, 1962.

FJ -- Joseph A. Bracken. "Faith and Justice: A New Synthesis? The Interface of Process and Liberation Theologies." Process Theology 14 (1984).

FMW -- Bertrand Russell. "A Free Man’s Worship." Why I Am Not a Christian. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967.

GOG -- Jay B. McDaniels. "The God of the Oppressed and the God Who Is Empty." God & Global Justice: Religion and Poverty in an Unequal World. Ed. Frederick Ferre and Rita Mataragnon. New York: Paragon House, 1985.

GSB -- Howard Burkle. The Non-Existence of God. New York: Herder & Herder, 1977.

IFJ -- William R. Jones. "Is Faith In God Necessary for the Just Society? Insights from Liberation Theology." The Search for Faith and Justice in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Gene G. James. New York: Paragon Press, 1987.

IFO -- Robert McAfee Brown. Is Faith Obsolete? Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974.

LT -- Frederick Herzog. Liberation Theology. New York: Seabury Press, 1972.

LTJ -- Matthew Lamb. "Liberation Theology and Social Justice." Process Studies 14/2 (Summer 1985): 102-123.

MFJ -- Schubert M. Ogden. "The Metaphysics of Faith and Justice." Process Studies 14/2 (Summer 1985): 87-101.

PCP -- John B. Cobb, Jr. "Points of Contact Between Process Theology and Liberation Theology in Matters of Faith and Justice." Process Studies 14/2 (Summer 1985): 124-141.

PLT -- Gene Reeves. "Process and Liberation Theologies." Liberation Theology: North American Style. Ed. Deane William Ferm. New York: Vertizon, 1987.

PML -- William ft. Jones. "Purpose and Method in Liberation Theology: Implications for an Interim Assessment." Liberation Theology. North American Style. Ed. Deane William Ferm. New York: Vertizon, 1987.

PT -- Dorothy Soelle. Political Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

PTT -- Randolph Miller. "Process Thought and Black Theology." Black Theology II. Ed. Calvin Bruce and William Jones. Lewisburg: Bucknell Press, 1978.

RLC -- William R. Jones. "The Religious Legitimation of Counter-violence: Insights from Latin American Liberation Theology." The Terrible Meek: Revolution and Religion in Cross-cultural Perspective. Ed. Lonnie D. Kliver. New York: Paragon Press, 1987.

SC -- Peter Berger. The Sacred Canopy. New York: Doubleday, 1969.

TL -- Gustavo Guiterrez. A Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979.

TLT -- June O’Conner. "Process Theology and Liberation Theology: Theology and Ethical Reflection." Horizon 7/2 (1980).

Notes


1This is the shorthand expression for economic, social, and political.

2 "Faith by its very nature inevitably finds expression in moral action, whether or to what extent faith also demands to be expressed through specifically political action continues to be disputed." Schubert M. Ogden, "The Metaphysics of Faith and Justice," Process Studies, 14/2 (1985):87.

3"‘To Dr. Faustus in his study, Mephistopheles told the history of the Creation, saying, ‘The endless praises of the choirs of angels had begun to grow wearisome; for after all, did he not deserve their praise?. . . Would it not be more amusing to obtain undeserved praise, to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured?’ He smiled inwardly, and resolved that the great drama should be performed."

" . . . Man was born, with the power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil, and the cruel thirst for worship. And Man saw that all is passing in this mad monstrous world . . And Man said, ‘There is a hidden purpose, could we but fathom it, and the purpose is good; for we must reverence something, and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of reverence.’ And man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God intended harmony to come out of chaos by human efforts . . . And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man’s sun, and all returned again to nebula.

‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘it was a good play; I will have it performed again"’ FMW 105-6.

4 In this regard, consider the following representatives of this genre: Elsa Tamez, The Bible of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982); Julio de Santa Ana, Good News to the Poor: The Challenge of the Poor in the History of the Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979).

The Inadequacy of Process Theology
to African-American Experience

Thandeka

​
​A critique by Thandeka of the pretensions of process thought. Her argument: the oppressed do not share process theology’s rationalism and idealism. Process theology is is too essentially rationalistic, European, and radically monistic, out of touch the experience of slaves, the marginalized, and the dispossessed of the world.

I’ve Known Rivers: Black Theology’s Response to Process Theology by Thandeka

excerpts
​

William R. Jones, Theodore Walker and Henry James Young share a worldview which is not readily apparent. This essay will identify their common vision and demonstrate that much of their vision cannot be interpreted by process categories. Most process theologians are unaware of this worldview. Reminiscent of Gertrude Stein’s comment about Oakland, many process theologians seem to have said, "there is no there there." Nevertheless, this worldview poses a basic challenge to process theology. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate why this is the case.

Jones, Walker, and Young affirm the importance of African sources in any adequate construction of a black liberation theology. According to Walker, "Traditional and ancient African religions are resources which are essential to black theology." These three theologians are not advocating a simple return to African traditional religion. Rather, each is acknowledging the role of African religion in his worldview. Nevertheless, Jones correctly suggests that the grid of oppression must also be used to assess these African religious sources. This worldview must be informed by the immediate liberation needs of African Americans today.

The integrity of the worldview of these three theologians prevents much of it from being broken down and subsumed under process categories. Their worldview has the integrity of the hard-edged hope of the oppressed. This hope is not idealized or polite. It is not an adventure of ideas. Rather, their worldview is the pathway of a people moving toward liberation. To the extent that process theologians understand this, they will be forced to acknowledge the partisan nature of their own metaphysical claims. This acknowledgment should bring forth a reevaluation of the implicit paternalism that allows process theologians to maintain a comfortable intellectual separation from the lived experiences of the oppressed.

​Addenda: Process Theology Today