Process Theology and Process Thought in the Writings of Michael Servetus

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, October 24-27, 2002, San Antonio, TX.

Introduction

Until the middle of the XIXth century the world was considered to be static and not undergoing changes. The same was extended to the realm of ideas and especially to religious views and doctrines, which, it was believed, were established once and for ever. This was to be changed with the development of new evolutionary ideas which were applied not only to the external world where the process was originally discovered, but also to the ideology, and obviously to the religious thought. We came to the realization that religious ideology, theology, evolves with the rest of the human endeavors. Thus we can label the XXIst century as the century of evolutionary outlook. There are two, it seems so far, major directions of thought related to religion: 1.One is the critical study and reevaluation of the written sources of various religions, in Christianity in modern times probably initiated by Samuel Reimarus at the end of the XVIIth century. 2. The other one is a diversified movement which tends to accommodate the natural sciences to religious doctrines or religious doctrines to natural sciences, depending on whom we ask. As initiators of this type of approach we may consider Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne.[1]

One of the key theoretical issues in the first movement is the traditional trinitarian dogma. The incendiary character of this issue was already feared by Erasmus. In his 1972 exhaustive study Edmund J. Fortman, a Catholic theologian, summarized it this way:

The formulation of this dogma was the most important theological achievement of the first five centuries of the Church ... yet this monumental dogma, celebrated in the liturgy by the recitation of the Nicene creed, seems to many even within the Church to be a museum piece, with little or no relevance to the crucial problems of contemporary life and thought. And to those outside the Church, the trinitarian dogma is a fine illustration of the absurd length to which theology has been carried, a bizarre formula of ‘sacred arithmetic.’[2]

Fortman’s study was followed recently by that of yet another Catholic theologian, Karl-Joseph Kuschel, and Anthony F. Buzzard.[3]

The second movement occurs in two varieties: A. One is the broad based and popular attempt at unification of the natural sciences and religious speculations; B. The other is more restricted, based primarily on philosophical speculations, the so-called process theology or process thought. Of course, there are several other trends with a much broader perspective of evaluating traditional religions as such, but this is beyond the goals proposed here.

A. From the side of theologically oriented natural scientists or scientifically oriented theologians there is a trend to use the natural sciences as a standard against which all theological speculations can be now evaluated. This trend is exemplified by the spreading movement supported by the Templeton Foundation which has one goal only – to prove scientifically that God exists. The title of the award given yearly by the Foundation reflects this attitude: The Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. Of course, this is a subterfuge, because the Templeton Foundation knows perfectly well that science cannot prove anything like that. Some scientists openly admit that they are believers in some kind of Christianity (or other religious systems), but that they do not have any evidence or that they believe in spite of not understanding the theological, religious premises. Others on the other extreme of the spectrum, like Paul Davies, who, when talking about various design schemes for the universe says: “I accept the fact that all the physical systems that we see, from the biological realm right through to the galaxies, are the products of natural physical processes and I would not use the word design in connection with those.” When asked how he visualizes God he answers “First of all I try to avoid using the word “god.”.... I have in mind something like that rational ground in which the laws of physics are rooted. My position is the rational ground on which the order of the universe is rooted, but the crucial quality here is that this rational ground is timeless. ... what I am talking about is something beyond space and time, so this is not a god within time, not a god to whom you can pray and have something change, because this god is a timeless being ... If you want to use the laws of physics to explain how the universe came to exist, then these laws have to transcend the universe – they have to exist in some sort of timeless Platonic realm, and that is what I really do believe.”[4] And he rejects religion based on the Bible classifying it as a sort of “madness.”

[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, (New York: The Free Press, 1985. First published in 1929). Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2000).

[2] Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God (New York: Baker Book House, 1972).

[3] Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity. Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound (San Francisco, London, Bethesda: International Scholars Publications, 1999). Karl-Josef Kuschel, Born Before All Time ? The Dispute over Christ's Origin, transl. by John Bowden. (New York: Crossroad,1992).

[4] Paul Davies, Traveling Through Time. A Conversation with Paul Davies. Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology July/August 2002, Vol. 2, 11/12, 8-11.