Open and relational theology posits two things:
God is open to the future because it has not occurred yet. (Edgar S. Brightman in The Finding of God: “God cannot be said to have complete foreknowledge. Although a divine mind would know all that was knowable and worth knowing, including the consequences of all possible choices, it would not know what choices a free mind would make.”)
We relate to God, but God also relates to us. Our actions and thoughts can and do affect Him. God is presumably quite pleased when we are baptized and accept confirmation, for example. God is surely hurt when we choose the only unforgivable sin, denial of the Holy Spirit (or denial of forgiveness).
Open and relational theology is a subset of process theology, which holds that the future is not predetermined and God’s experience of His creation is one of an unfolding process. As such, the contention “God is unchanging” makes no sense at all.
Open and relational theology cannot be understood without personal choice. God gave men, and to some extent His other creatures, free will; the former is what led to the Fall.
Another term for this theology is the God Can’t hypothesis. Why doesn’t God prevent suffering? Because He can’t. There’s a long list of things God cannot do, including die, duplicate Himself, or sin. It isn’t true that God is omnipotent or “can do anything.”
This, then, opens the possibility that the list of things God can’t do is even longer than we had thought. God, whose essence is love, surely could not choose to permit suffering. Under open and relational theology, God can’t prevent suffering.
I would sum up the claim here as “God cannot move atoms and molecules around.” If true, open and relational theology amounts to a shit-test for one’s faith in God: If God can’t affect the physical world to help you or someone you care about (if, in effect, God can’t cure your cancer), do you still believe in Him?
Yes, of course.
But this raises questions for Catholics.
There has been no attempt to assess open and relational theology within the boundaries of the Magisterium, tradition, or simple Catholic experience. That’s because Catholic theologians tend to view process theology as a heresy (I’ve been told that to my face), despite the presence of a book addressing process theology and Catholicism.
Another factor here is the primary promoter of open and relational theology, an American with the difficult name of Thomas Jay Oord. He’s a mildly overweight strawberry blond from some oddball Protestant-adjacent sect. Oord is big on so-called LGBTQ+ inclusion (“Now you have two problems”), and has apparently gotten in trouble for same. “Not our kind of people,” tradcaths might say, if they’d even heard of him, which they positively have not.
He’s also extraordinarily persuasive and makes something close to an airtight case on its face. Certainly I see no plausible counterargument to the model in which God knows all possible futures but not which precise future will eventuate or come into being.
The Wedding Feast at Cana is the clearest evidence of God’s inability to see the future: The Blessed Mother’s insistence that Jesus’ work begin then and there came as an evident surprise to Him.
Open theology explains how intercession by Mary or the saints could possibly do anything – in this case changing God’s mind as a result of their free choice to make a case for us.
Indeed, such intercession is one of the few Catholic beliefs that buttress the open part of open and relational theology.
Still, this model of God fails to explain fundamental Catholic tenets. I hesitate to say these objections blow this theology out of the water for the simple reason that all theologies have lacunæ and limitations.
But just as Catholics have never heard of Thomas Jay Oord or this genre of process theology, Oord has never brought up any of the following objections.
Transsubstantiation. Supernatural events here on Earth not only cannot be explained by open and relational theology but nearly disprove it. Transsubstantiation occurs at every mass and very much involves changing atoms and molecules.
Fundamentally, the Eucharist cannot be explained by open and relational theology. Proponents of process theology have almost never been Catholic; the Eucharist is not a stumbling block for them because they don’t have one. Catholic theologians would never have come up with open and relational theology because the whole enterprise would have been stopped in its tracks by the Eucharist.
Miracles. Along the same lines, miracles are explained entirely unconvincingly by Oord. I’ve read everything he’s written on the topic and listened to him speak at length. He gins up some half-assed postulate about how (to continue with my terminology) atoms and molecules choose to coöperate with God’s will. If God actually does cure your cancer, will that mean your cancer cells chose to listen to God and self-immolate?
Incorrupt saints. Bodies that do not decay are bodies made of atoms and molecules that behave unlike other bodies made of the same.
Laying on of hands, and sacraments as a whole. We are the real church because we have apostolic succession. (Fly in ointment: So do the Orthodox. Whoops!) Not only ordination but confirmation and last rites are all effected by laying on of hands.
Indeed, all seven sacraments require objects and the physical body. One must be baptized with water. Marriage is the only sacrament not conferred by the priest (merely officiated, administered, blessed, or witnessed by), but instead bestowed between husband and wife through consummation.
If the sacraments were merely the Holy Spirit at work, surely He could jump a small air gap if a priest or bishop were to keep his hands in his cassock pockets.
Marian apparitions. At intervals understandable only to her and to the Good Lord, the Virgin Mary manifests on Earth and delivers stern warnings. In the case of Our Lady of Akita, a statue effectively came alive by shedding tears.
One could imagine that God can’t move atoms or bits, but that He delegated such authority to Mary. Not inconceivable, but a stretch.
In other words, when did “God can’t” begin?
God quite obviously could (past tense) move around atoms and molecules. He created the heavens and the Earth. He created Man and all the beasts of the Earth. But He also instigated the Flood – and note that He did so after seeing how man had chosen to disobey, itself strong evidence of an inability to know the future.
It seems that the rainbow, provided as proof of God’s covenant never to flood the Earth again, is the inflection point after which God indeed could not. But this interpretation undermines the foundation of relational theology: It indeed posits that God chooses not to intervene in the workings of His creation. Fundamental to Oord’s reading is his contention that a God whose nature is love (in Oord’s coinage, He is amnipotent, not omnipotent) could not plausibly choose to let his children suffer.
If we take the manifestation of the rainbow as the cutoff point of God’s manipulative power (or the starting point or startup of its absence), yet reject those as forms of God’s free choice, then we indeed run up against the paradox of God’s creating a rock so big He cannot lift it. Here God uses his power to limit said power.
Except I do not view cutoff and startup as equivalent. God could desire to die or duplicate Himself... yet be unable to do either. Here He runs up against His own limitations. In like manner, God could desire to move atoms and molecules in His creation, only to run up against His own limitation.
God’s creating a rock so big He cannot lift it would be an expression of His power; the rainbow attests to God’s ability to withhold His power. In short, God cannot do things without limitation, but could refrain from doing things without limitation. There may be no limits on what God opts not to do. God may indeed have the infinite power not to act.
So then: Starting with the reality of the Eucharist, it seems apparent that Catholic objections to open and relational theology are fatal to that theology.
Not quite.
I have a catchphrase for everything. And despite being unreasonably strict and uptight (despite liking a place for everything and everything in its place), I embrace contradiction and paradox. In fact only a strict, uptight person can embrace paradox, else there is no terra firma from which to launch a conundrum.
“If you find yourself in some weird surreal situation, assume you’re in a Tarkovsky movie and proceed accordingly,” I say every five minutes. Sometimes only Solaris or Stalker makes sense to explain what’s going on in the moment. It would be tedious fact-checking to nag us that we are not technically in a Tarkovsky movie. Print the legend.
The assumption that God does not intervene because God can’t parsimoniously describes observed reality almost all the time. When not in mass, when not experiencing a Marian apparition, when not experiencing a miracle, indeed at all times of most Catholics’ lives it really does seem that God can’t.
Taking this whole theology as true really is a shit-test. Do you still believe in God even if your Tarkovskian operating assumption is that he cannot move atoms and molecules around? Of course you do. To claim otherwise would be tedious fact-checking.
Posted: 2025.02.22
You were here: Catholic projects ☛ Open and relational theology and Catholicism