I may certainly be misunderstanding the concept (or understanding it incompletely) but for me, as a process-relational thinker, the pejorative ontotheological criticism/dismissal has never bothered me much in the first place, and as a panpsychically-oriented, panentheistic religious naturalist I again don’t care. A) in the process-relational conception of things the “ontic” category isn’t really meaningful, right? God is not an individual “being” but open ended relational becoming (like we all are, right?) and B) regarding the concern that, what?, an ontotheological conception of God is “too small,” I go with Loomer: “God is expressed as the organic restlessness of the whole body of creation,” and this S-I-Z-E is only limited by our imaginations. Obviously as a panentheist I would want to qualify that a bit and say God can’t be completely reduced down to Creation; God is the World Soul, not-less-than-personal, with intentions and desires who is concerned with the well-being of Her little loves…

The above passage is a comment I wrote on one of my recent facebook posts. The original post was from Jay McDaniel’s site and was all about Creation Ex Nihilo, and drew upon Catherine Keller’s and Brad Artson’s work. In the comments, however, the focus shifted to process theology in general and the “ontotheological error.” A fun chat was had!

Tags:Godmetaphysicsontotheologypanentheismprocess philosophyprocess theologyreligious naturalism