Journeys in Process: The Promise of Process Theologies with Don Viney

“There is something too narrow and something missing in the Gospel as presented to us today… Wider horizons, not a tighter rein—that, if I am not mistaken, is the only remedy that can effectively bring our generation back to the ways of truth.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Philosophically refined concepts of God from antiquity to the modern period, both east and west, pictured God as beyond time and change, unaffected by the flux of the universe. The very elements of the cosmos were often conceived in static terms, and nature’s processes depicted as cyclical or lacking direction. It is only in the last three centuries that alternatives to the classical theological traditions have been entertained. More recently, the advent of a more dynamic, evolutionary, and developmental understanding of the universe has often been accompanied by refreshingly new perspectives in philosophical theology. The thinking of philosopher-scientists like A. N. Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Charles Hartshorne represent important streams of novel ideas about God and the world. In this presentation, Dr. Don Viney will explore, and occasionally argue for, the metaphysical underpinnings of these new theologies, variously known as “process,” “process-relational,” and “openness” theologies.

Donald Wayne Viney (BA in philosophy 1977, Colorado State Univ. 1977; MA 1979 and PhD 1982 in philosophy, the Univ. of Oklahoma) is a three-time recipient of the title of University Professor at Pittsburg State University (Kansas) where he has taught philosophy and religion since 1984. Professor Viney is the author of several books and dozens of articles and reviews in philosophy of religion and he serves on the editorial boards of Process Studies, The Midwest Quarterly, Cahiers Jules Lequier, and The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy. His most recent book, co-authored with George W. Shields, is The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination (Process Century Press, 2020).