The Becoming of God: Process Theology, Philosophy, and Multireligious Engagement (Cascade Companions)

How should we believe in God today? If we look beyond our little lives to the vast cosmos, we may even ask: Why all that? And even if we spiritually feel the universe: Why believe any religion? After all, there are many; and haven't they contributed to the predicament of humanity? Process theology gives provocative answers to these questions: how we are bound by the organic cycles of this world, but how in this web of life God shines even in the last, least, and forgotten event as the Eros of its becoming and as its mirror of greatness; why anything exists: because it is from beauty, for harmony and intensity, and through a consciousness of peace rising from our deepest intuitions of existence. We can change: not only in our thoughts and lives, but even in the way we experience this world. This book introduces such a new way of experiencing, thinking, and living. Based on the fascinating work on cosmology, religion, and civilization of Alfred North Whitehead, this book develops the main theses of process theology and elucidates it as a theopoetics of mutual care for the unexpected, the excluded, the forgotten, and a future society of peace. "Again the bottomless becomingness, the compassionate adventurousness, the insistent poetics of Roland Faber's thinking--indeed of his God--offer themselves to us in language. He echoes and interprets the language of process theology, but with a 'transreligious' difference. Whitehead might find himself mysteriously refreshed in these genial 'contours of becoming.'" --Catherine Keller, Drew University; author of Cloud of the Impossible "Faber is one of the most creative theologians alive, and The Becoming of God is a masterful engagement with Whitehead. Through sixteen profound Explorations, he explains how Whitehead's ideas about God remain vitally important for contemporary understandings of philosophy, science, and religion. The book culminates with Faber's own theo-poetics, including his important conception of God as Poet of the World." --Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas "It would be impossible to exaggerate how deeply the present is a time of intellectual renewal and innovation. This is nowhere more apparent than in matters pertaining to revising and interrogating conceptions of divinity. And this is nowhere more manifest than in the work of Roland Faber. He is at once deeply rooted in the process tradition and singularly innovative. The Becoming of God is a magisterial and breathtaking feat of theoretical imagination while being a work of impressive erudition and painstaking argumentation." --Vincent Colapietro, Pennsylvania State University Roland Faber is the Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr. Professor of Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology, and founder of the Whitehead Research Project. His books include God as Poet of the World (2008), Event and Decision (2010), Beyond Metaphysics? (2010), Secrets of Becoming (2011), Butler on Whitehead (2013), Theopoetic Folds (2013), Beyond Superlatives (2014), The Allure of Things (2014), The Divine Manifold (2014), and Living Traditions and Universal Conviviality (2016). Read more