Process theology offers a mediating position with its
philosophical language about cosmology, though it is unclear whether scientific
cosmology is taken entirely on board here. Barbour, for example, affirms
“objective immortality”: we participate in God’s consequent nature and memory.
Like some process theologians, however, he also affirms “subjective
immortality, in which the human self continues as a center of experience in a
radically different environment”, the endlessly changing divine eternity.
John Haught develops a kenotic form of process theology with a metaphysics
grounded in the future. Theology offers a broad explanation of the world which
includes the results of evolutionary biology. He recognizes the possible
challenge to eschatological purpose posed by Big Bang cosmology but claims that
“the cosmological features of modern science are no less assimilable to a deep
religious trust than were the cosmologies of the past.” Gloomy scenarios of the
cosmic future were based on “emaciated mathematical abstractions that ignored
the contingent openness of nature’s de facto historicity.”Instead, Haught points to the new sciences of chaos and complexity as rendering
“the prospect of precise scientific prediction of final cosmic catastrope ...
shakier than ever.” Moreover, from a Whiteheadian perspective, genuine novelty
must arise out of the future.
Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell