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Does God “Become?” Another Revolution in Theology

Does God “Become?” Another Revolution in Theology

Last updated on: September 2, 2024 at 9:58 am by Roger E. Olson

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Does God “Become?” Another Revolution in Theology 2024-09-02T09:58:57-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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Recently here I wrote about a major turn in modern theology beginning with the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel who talked about God as Subject and not substance. (Or, in one place, Subject as well as substance.) Later, after Hegel, many especially Protestant theologians picked up on that and made more of it. These included Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Juergen Moltmann, Eberhard Juengel and Robert Jenson (whose picture I attached here). I also wrote here about Soren Kierkegaard’s emphasis on God as Subject rather than substance. Moving on from that…

Hegel also introduced another revolutionary idea into the stream of modern Christian theology—the becoming of God. According to Hegel there is a sense in which God becomes along with the world. “The historicity of God.” Absolute Spirit, Hegel’s favored term for God, becomes something in history. And yet, in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel could not quite bring himself to say that God is temporal, so he believed in a non-temporal becoming of God. That is, to say the least, dialectical.

The key idea here is that God comes to self-actualization, self-realization, in the process of history. “Without a world, God is not God.” It means that without history God would remain indeterminate without personhood, at least as God achieves personhood in history.

Later, especially in the 20th century, many Christian theologians who did not especially want to be associated with Hegel in people’s minds picked up on Hegel’s “becoming of God” and even hinted at a temporal becoming of God.

People immediately think of process theology, but that is not part of the revolution in Christian thought I’m talking about here. Well, it might be, but process theology is inspired by philosopher Alfred North Whitehead more than Hegel. Yet, Hegel might be lurking in the background even of process theology. Hegel’s influence on Whitehead is uncertain.

No, the revolution I’m talking about here, now, is the idea of a non-panentheist becoming of God. “Panentheism” is, of course, the idea that God and the world are interdependent, that God depends on the world for himself. Process theology is a form of panentheism. Hegel was a panentheist.

But a stream of Christian thinkers not usually thought to be Hegelian (with one or two exceptions) picked up on the idea of God’s becoming and worked it in a more orthodox way. (Of course, there are Christian thinkers who would consider ANY idea of God as becoming heretical.)

Karl Barth is usually considered the “father” of this non-Hegelian (but perhaps indirectly inspired by Hegel) idea of God’s becoming. Not all experts on Barth’s theology believe that he was; many deny that he believed in any becomingness of God. However, a close reading of Church Dogmatics reveals (at least to me) that Barth did believe that God comes out of himself in history and is affected by that. That is, that God has a history.

My story: When in seminary I encountered process theology. I took a seminar in process theology taught by a process theologian. I was not attracted to it. I looked for an alternative to process theology that was non-panentheist but still contained the idea of God as Subject and historical. I read Robert Jenson’s God After God and believed I found it. According to Jenson, at least in that book, Barth’s theology is best interpreted as teaching a becoming of God, but not a panentheistic becoming of God. I was more than intrigued.

Eventually I read and studied German theologians who, like Jenson, believed that Barth’s theology was a non-panentheistic alternative to process theology and to sheer Hegelian panentheism. They included especially Moltmann, Juengel, and Pannenberg. I went to Germany to study with Pannenberg to find out what he meant by “God does not yet exist.” I wrote the first draft of my Rice University dissertation on that subject in Munich under Pannenberg. He approved it. He even called it “Ausgezeichnet.” Later, one member of my dissertation committee required that I revise it to include more criticism of Pannenberg’s theology. I did it reluctantly.

So what do these German theologians, and perhaps Barth (who was Swiss), owe to Hegel. I think that is the idea of God’s becomingness without process theology’s near-collapse of God into the world process.

All these theologians, including Jenson (and I think Carl Braaten), believed in a voluntary becoming of God in the history of humanity but all interpret that in a trinitarian manner (another difference from most process theology). That is, the Trinity is a set of relationships that changes, especially with the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. This was made especially clear in Moltmann’s book The Trinity and the Kingdom which I read in German in Munich. There the Tuebingen theologian wrote about the changing “patterns” of the Trinity in history. Jenson wrote a similar book entitled The Triune Identity. Pannenberg wrote and lectured about the historicity of God. Even Catholic theologian Hans Kueng talked about the historicity of God in the book he identified to me as his best and most important book: Die Menschwerdung Gottes (E.T., The Incarnation). There, Kueng delved deeply into Hegel’s importance for modern Christian thought about God. He exposed the influence of Hegel in modern, especially German, Christian thought about God.

I should mention there an American philosophical theologian who may or not be Christian who also write about God’s becoming, God as event, but without the process theology angle on “becoming.” His name is Richard Kearney. He is worth considering as a disciple of Hegel, whether he intends that or not, even though he is not usually considered a Christian theologian. For him, God is pure potential.

Does God become? Or is God “actus purus,” pure actuality without any potentiality? God as “pure actuality” without potentiality is widely considered orthodox Christian doctrine. I have long rejected that, believing that God is both actual and potential. The incarnation and the cross meant something for God. God acquired experiences that he did not have before. The God of the Bible is a God of history who enters into human history with us. God is a dynamic God who is what he does (Barth).

*Note: If you choose to comment, make sure your comment is relatively brief (no more than 100 words), on topic, addressed to me, civil and respectful (not hostile or argumentative), and devoid of pictures or links.*

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