Co-Creation in Process Theology - Ellen Grace Lesser - SRF Online Oct 2024 скачать в хорошем качестве

Co-Creation in Process Theology - Ellen Grace Lesser - SRF Online Oct 2024

Co-Creation in Process Theology Ellen Grace Lesser; University of Exeter ABSTRACT: Process theology reconsiders many areas of Christian tradition and can be applied to many others, including notions of co-creation. Co-creation has traditionally been reserved for human beings but process theology can challenge this reservation. Process philosophy was first developed in its most popular form by Alfred North Whitehead and provides a metaphysics based on reality consisting of occasions of experience. In process philosophy, the present consists of currently becoming occasions of experience, the past consists of occasions of experience which have become and have passed away, and the future consists of occasions which have not yet become and thus do not yet exist. Crucially, this means that the future does not exist in the present. Process theology takes this and concludes that God cannot know the future, as God can only know what exists. Process theologian Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki clarifies this: God can know which futures are possible, but not which futures will come to pass. Which futures come to pass is dependent on the free actions of occasions of experience. Using Whitehead's process philosophy and Suchocki's process theology, I argue in this paper that because all occasions are responsible for determining which future out of the possible futures comes to pass, all occasions are co-creators in process theology. This, in turn, means that co-creation is not limited to human beings but that all created beings are cocreators. Recorded at 'Peacocke @ 100 - Science, Causality and God: Divine Action in a Scientific Age' an online conference from the Science and Religion Forum - 28th - 29th October 2024 Find out more about The Science and Religion Forum and register for future conferences at https://www.srforum.org/