Searching for an Adequate God: 

A Dialogue between Process 

and Free Will Theists

Edited by John B. Cobb Jr. 

and Clark H. Pinnock

 William B. Eerdmans Publishing:  July, 2000.  269 pages.

Reviewed by Sally Bruynell

For another review by David Pendleton, please click here.

The "openness of God" debate has touched off a theological squall within the evangelical community and "divine openness" has become the subject of numerous articles in religious periodicals such as Christianity Today. Openness of God theology, sometimes known as free-will theism, is challenging the long-standing Calvinist hegemony that has ruled evangelical theology, particularly in the United States. Doctrines such as predestination and divine immutability have a well-staked territory in the works of leading evangelical theologians and these boundaries are not easily challenged. However, given the worldwide growth of Wesleyan movements such as Methodism, and her offspring Pentecostalism, such a challenge seems long overdue.

Wesleyan theology emphasizes the role of human free-will in the spiritual life, particularly in the process of salvation. On this view, the atonement is not limited to a select group of individuals who are predestined by God for salvation but is universally available to all who choose to respond to Christ. The ability to accept or reject the call of Christ, and the responsibility for such a choice, belongs to each individual. Such a perspective will of course have implications for one’s theology. It has fallen to the proponents of divine openness, the free-will theists, to explore these implications and to challenge the dominant evangelical tradition.

Briefly put, free-will theists hold that God is the only necessary being that exists. He is the everlasting (rather than timeless), self-existent Creator who, out of his holy love, freely creates and sustains all that is. Creation is ex nihilo, out of nothing, and a perfect reflection of the divine will in its original nature. As a part of this creation, God has endowed human beings with powers and prerogatives that they exercise as a part of the Imago Dei. Such agency often expresses itself, after the Fall, in a manner which is sinful, harmful, or destructive. God may not approve of the way in which humans use their power, but He has chosen, for purposes of His own, to stay his hand for a time.

Free-will theists hold that God is omnipotent; however He chooses to limit His own power so that we may truly exercise ours. Because of this, human choices are not entirely predetermined.  God experiences human history along with us as the future unfolds. 

Likewise, God is omniscient, but his foreknowledge of future events is in some way limited by the fact that those events have not yet occurred. This does not compromise his sovereignty, for God is able to bring about any future event he chooses in a manner consistent with his character and promises. Every divine promise and plan will be fulfilled. At the same time, the future is open, and God is open to the future.

One of the objections put forward by opponents of the openness position is that it is process theology in evangelical drag. Such claims have been rejected by free will theists and process theologians alike, with neither camp being particularly flattered by the comparisons. For this reason, Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists is all the more remarkable. This collection of essays lets us in on a genuinely collegial and earnest meeting of the minds between significant theologians and philosophers on both sides.

The work is comprised of contributions by David Griffin, William Hasker, Nancy Howell, Richard Rice and David Wheeler, with short introductory contributions from editors John B. Cobb, Jr. and Clark Pinnock. Together, they set about to map the territory where the boundaries between process and openness of God theology appear to overlap. In so doing, they clarify their own doctrinal distinctives and explore conceptions of what it means to be an evangelical or process thinker generally. Sections by David Griffin, and Richard Rice are particularly helpful toward this end.

Although each piece brings something of interest to the reader’s table, for the sake of brevity I will respond to just one chapter. David Wheeler’s contribution, "Confessional Communities and Public Worldviews: A Case Study," lies at the center of the book and in some sense also represents the essence of the debate itself. As a pastor-scholar, Wheeler wants to bring evangelical faith and process philosophy into a rich and fruitful collaboration because from his perspective,  these faith communities and philosophical systems need each other. After an autobiographical introduction, which helps explain his interest in both faith and philosophy, Wheeler lays out three principles for this interaction: (1) the particularity of religious faith, (2) the pluralism and relativism of religious faiths, and (3) the fact that faith communities and metaphysical schemes need each other.

Wheeler reflects on the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals (1942). He points out the challenges that process theology makes to conservative evangelical theology as exemplified by the NAE and theologians like Carl F. H. Henry. He then calls for a "mutual transformation" of both evangelical faith and process theism, specifically in the areas of Scripture, the human person, the Body of Christ, creation-ecology, and eschatology. In each case, the typical conservative theology of evangelicalism is transformed in a liberal direction by its encounter with process thought. From this the reader may surmise that, while Wheeler may write of his Southern Baptist roots, he is obviously a mainline Baptist today!

Wheeler, who is clearly on a personal quest, makes a public call for mutual modification. How seriously either camp will listen to him remains to be seen. Indeed, why would process philosophers like the late Charles Hartshorne modify their philosophical system simply to meet evangelical sensibilities? Even if, as Wheeler argues, philosophy needs a faith community, why would process thinkers select evangelicals? Liberal Protestants would seem to be closer to process theism’s perspectives. On the other hand, even if theology needs philosophical concepts and rigor, why should evangelical theology work with process philosophy? There are other philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga or Richard Swinburne, whose philosophical work is equally rigorous and far more in keeping with evangelical thought.

In addition to commenting on Wheeler's chapter, I would also like to make some general observations on the debate as a whole. This is in many ways a truly irenic and compassionate work of theology. From the comments and responses it is apparent that the participants have labored together as equals. The most important fruit of their labor is probably the many ways it clarifies misconceptions about both evangelicals and process thinkers. Both process and evangelical theologians will benefit from the care and intellectual generosity of this work. It is generally readable, and the first-year seminarian should have no difficulty understanding the content.

At the same time, however, this book is destined to disappoint those who purchase it hoping to be engaged by a dialogue involving John Cobb or Clark Pinnock. Their contributions are limited to very short introductions by each, rather like masters of ceremony introducing contestants in a friendly competition. To be honest, this is probably the shortcoming that will limit the book’s impact on theology in the long run. For better or worse, Cobb and Pinnock have become the "grand old men" of their respective theological positions, and we want to hear from them.

This being said, Searching for and Adequate God is a timely book which is extremely important for the contemporary theological scene in the northern hemisphere. Anyone who takes the time to read and appreciate the arguments and positions delineated in its essays should be effectively disabused of the notion that process and free-will theists belong in the same category in any significant sense. This is not to say that the book is a "classic" in the big picture. I suspect that in ten years the openness debate will have progressed to the point where the distinctions so newly exposed in this work will be understood by the average reader of theological texts.

By the same token, I suspect that the charges of heresy and crypto-Whiteheadianism will continue long into the future of the debate among evangelicals, despite the earnest efforts of this book. One need only look at how often the charges of semi-Pelagianism are still leveled against John Wesley and his followers to see a parallel. The term "semi-Pelagian" still makes an appearance in some theological discussions of them where it has the force of an invective.  It may well be that the type of irenic dialogue demonstrated so ably here among process and free-will theists will be a long time coming within the evangelical community itself.