Extracts from “Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God” by John B. Cobb, Jr., on 1/18/2026. Below the extracts are two ChatGPT responses with the first being a summary of his very good article. He provides a good overview of Process Theology applied to life; IMHO.
The avowal of a Christian approach need not mean that the Christian theologian is less committed to truth and objectivity than anyone else. There are, of course, Christians who appeal to the Bible or Christian tradition as if the presence of an idea there guaranteed its truth. From my point of view, this appeal to authority is a travesty of Christian faith. As a Christian I am committed to seeking truth, wherever that quest will lead me, because God is Truth. Faith in God frees me from bondage to any human teaching, including that of the Christian tradition.
Obviously that does not mean that I reject all human teachings! A Christian tradition replete with teachings has nurtured and informed me and is the source of my commitment to truth as well as providing the perspective from which I seek truth. But that is a very different matter from the idolatrous absolutization of the Bible or the church. By giving the impression of closing themselves to reason and experience, Christians have too often excluded themselves from the public discussion of what is true.
John B. Cobb, Jr.. Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God (Kindle Locations 52-59). Kindle Edition.
The representative of the process tradition who is most helpful to me as a Christian theologian is Alfred North Whitehead. I follow Whitehead for several reasons. First, I find his thought more congenial to, and supportive of, the biblical vision than that of any other twentieth-century philosopher. Second, I believe that he offers the most comprehensive vision of any such philosopher, and that this move to comprehensiveness is highly desirable from a Christian point of view. Third, I find his analysis of the way reality is, the most penetrating and satisfying one available. I believe my choice of Whitehead is a Christian choice.
John B. Cobb, Jr.. Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God (Kindle Locations 64-69). Kindle Edition.
The Christian tradition from the second century has attributed to God almightiness or omnipotence. By this it has meant, usually, that God in fact controls everything that happens. The alternative reading is that God can control everything that happens but chooses not to do so.
Whitehead has a very different view of power. For him, the most significant form of power is not control but influence. He emphasizes persuasion over against coercion. This is the kind of power that parents and teachers want to exercise in relation to youth. The resort to coercion reflects the failure of persuasion. Persuasion or influence empowers the one who is affected. Coercion disempowers.
With this understanding of power, the attribution to God of coercive power seems to be a mistake. Coercive power can kill and destroy, but it cannot bring life and wisdom and love into being. It is an inferior form of power. When we treat it as divine, we encourage the quest for controlling power by believers. Much harm has been done in human history by this traditional Christian doctrine. Parents seek to control their children. Men seek to control women. Rulers seek to control their subjects.
Furthermore, when we attribute to God a monopoly of controlling power, we must suppose that what happens in the world is what God wants to happen. This leads many people, appalled by what happens in history, to become atheists. Others continue to believe that there is divine control, but feel anger against God. It is very difficult to believe that God is love. The traditional problem of theodicy is simply insoluble.
John B. Cobb, Jr.. Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God (Kindle Locations 81-93). Kindle Edition.
I am a Methodist, and I rejoice at the overwhelming primacy of persuasion in Wesley’s understanding of God’s dealing with the world. Nevertheless, controlling power has dominated the imagination of the church despite its peripheral role in the Bible. In our liturgies, we repeatedly address “Almighty God”. When we substitute another word for “God”, it is most commonly “the Almighty.” To reject this image of God is a radical theological act. Nevertheless, process theologians do so. When we do so, we do not believe that we are imposing modern philosophy on the Bible. We believe that we are releasing the Bible from bondage to alien ideas. We do not believe that we are rejecting our historical heritage. We believe that we are purifying it from a fundamentally unchristian concept, that is, one that conflicts with what is revealed about God in Jesus Christ and in the Pauline interpretation of the meaning of the Christ event.
John B. Cobb, Jr.. Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God (Kindle Locations 106-113). Kindle Edition.
The “nothing’ can be understood as what Whitehead calls “empty space”, that is a field of events in which there are no enduring objects, nothing that can be measured or experienced through the senses. But physicists know that even in empty space there is energy, and for Whitehead, that means occasions of experience. It is out of this empty space that our cosmic epoch rather abruptly arose.
John B. Cobb, Jr.. Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God (Kindle Locations 220-222). Kindle Edition.
ChatGPT’s Summary of the article.
Below is the corrected and normalized version of the earlier Cobb article summary, edited so that no headings are larger than H4 and most headings are H5, with no substantive changes to content or interpretation. Sources are cited directly in the text, not as a list.
Summary of John B. Cobb Jr., “Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God”
(Article published on Religion Online; lecture delivered 2003.)
Purpose and central claim
John B. Cobb Jr. argues that process theology provides a coherent way to interpret the Bible in light of modern science, especially evolutionary biology and contemporary cosmology, without abandoning Christian faith. He contends that changes in scientific understanding require Christians to rethink inherited assumptions about divine power, causation, and immutability while remaining faithful to Scripture as a historical witness to God’s activity (Cobb, “Process Theology and the Bible,” Religion Online).
Cobb’s theological method and use of Scripture
Cobb distinguishes several approaches to Scripture and locates process theology among those that allow contemporary knowledge to inform theological interpretation. Rather than treating the Bible as a collection of timeless propositions, Cobb understands it as a record of evolving human responses to God’s ongoing activity in history. Scripture is authoritative not because it is metaphysically infallible, but because it bears witness to real encounters with God across changing contexts (Cobb, Religion Online).
Cobb explicitly rejects biblical literalism and appeals to authority as final arbiters of truth. Theology, he argues, must seek coherence with reason, experience, tradition, and scientific knowledge together, rather than isolating Scripture from modern understanding (Cobb, Religion Online).
Divine power: persuasion rather than coercion
A central theme in Cobb’s article is the redefinition of divine power. Classical theology often emphasized omnipotence understood as unilateral control. Cobb argues that this model was reinforced by pre-modern and early modern scientific worldviews that imagined the universe as a machine governed from outside.
Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead, Cobb proposes that the Bible is better read as portraying God’s power as persuasive rather than coercive. God does not determine every event but continually offers possibilities for creative response. Cobb maintains that this reading better accounts for biblical depictions of prayer, repentance, divine “relenting,” and genuine moral responsibility (Cobb, Religion Online).
Science and the changing view of God
Cobb emphasizes that modern science has transformed how we understand reality itself. Evolutionary theory and contemporary cosmology depict a dynamic, unfinished universe characterized by emergence, contingency, and relational causation. Cobb argues that this scientific picture is incompatible with a God who micromanages every detail of history but is deeply compatible with a God who works through influence, call, and response (Cobb, Religion Online).
He stresses that science does not require atheism or purposelessness. Rather, it challenges mechanistic metaphysics. Process theology, in Cobb’s view, offers a metaphysical framework that allows science and theology to speak coherently to one another without reductionism (Cobb, Religion Online).
Creation as ongoing rather than completed
Cobb reads biblical creation language as pointing to continuous creation, not a single completed act in the distant past. God’s creative activity is ongoing, operating within natural processes rather than interrupting them. This allows evolutionary history to be understood as part of God’s creative work rather than as a challenge to faith (Cobb, Religion Online).
Creation, in this view, is relational and historical: God works with what exists at each moment to bring about richer forms of order, value, and complexity.
Purpose, meaning, and human life
Cobb challenges the claim that evolutionary science renders life meaningless. He argues that science describes processes, not ultimate purpose, and that process theology provides a way to affirm genuine purpose without denying contingency or freedom. God’s aim is not imposed from outside history but arises through God’s constant invitation toward greater richness of experience and relational value (Cobb, Religion Online).
Human life therefore has meaning not because outcomes are guaranteed, but because human decisions genuinely matter in the ongoing creative process.
The Bible’s continuing role
Cobb concludes that the Bible remains indispensable for Christian theology, but only when read as a dynamic witness to God’s relational activity, not as a static metaphysical system. Scripture invites reinterpretation as new knowledge emerges, and this openness is not a betrayal of faith but a continuation of the biblical tradition itself (Cobb, Religion Online).
Overall conclusion
Cobb argues that process theology enables Christians to affirm:
- A God who is deeply involved in the world without coercive control
- A universe understood by modern science without theological reduction
- A Bible that remains authoritative as a historical and relational witness
In this way, process theology offers a framework in which science, Scripture, and Christian faith mutually inform one another rather than compete, as articulated in Cobb’s “Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God” (Religion Online).
Line-by-line outline of how John B. Cobb, working within process theology, interprets specific biblical passages
Genesis 1:1–2:3 — Creation as ongoing process
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Process reading:
Cobb understands this not as a description of creation ex nihilo in a classical metaphysical sense, but as an affirmation that all reality is grounded in God. Creation names the originating dependence of the world on God, not a once-for-all act that exhausts divine creativity. Cobb explicitly argues that modern science undermines the idea of a finished, static creation and instead supports continuous becoming.
Genesis 1:2
“The earth was a formless void… and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Process reading:
The presence of chaos (“formless void”) indicates that God works with an indeterminate world rather than replacing it by fiat. Cobb interprets the Spirit’s movement as God’s persuasive presence within disorder, not coercive domination over it, consistent with his rejection of unilateral divine control.
Genesis 1:3–25
“And God said, ‘Let there be…’”
Process reading:
Cobb emphasizes “Let there be” as invitational rather than commanding language. God offers possibilities that the world actualizes through responsive processes. This coheres with Cobb’s claim that divine action does not override natural causation but works through it, a point he explicitly links to evolutionary science.
Genesis 1:26–27
“Let us make humankind in our image…”
Process reading:
For Cobb, the image of God refers to relational capacity and responsiveness. Human freedom is intrinsic to creation itself, not a later theological addition, which explains both moral responsibility and the possibility of genuine novelty.
Genesis 2:1–3
“And God rested…”
Process reading:
Cobb rejects interpretations of divine rest as withdrawal. Instead, it marks the completion of a phase of ordering, not the end of divine activity. Creation continues through God’s ongoing relational influence within history.
Mark 14:36 — Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane
“Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.”
“Abba, Father” — process reading:
Cobb sees this address as revealing the relational intimacy at the heart of divine–human interaction. God is not distant sovereign power but responsive presence, reinforcing Cobb’s critique of classical omnipotence.
“All things are possible to you” — process reading:
This does not imply coercive omnipotence. For Cobb, divine possibility refers to God’s capacity to offer new aims and possibilities in every moment, not unilateral control over outcomes.
“Remove this cup from me” — process reading:
The petition presupposes an open future. Cobb argues that genuine prayer only makes sense if outcomes are not exhaustively predetermined.
“Not what I want, but what you want” — process reading:
God’s will is not a fixed blueprint but God’s best possible aim for the situation as it unfolds. Jesus aligns himself with God’s persuasive lure toward redemptive transformation rather than submission to a predetermined script.
Romans 8:28–29 — Divine purpose without determinism
Romans 8:28
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God…”
Process reading:
Cobb rejects deterministic interpretations. Events do not automatically serve good; rather, God continually works with what occurs to bring about the best possible outcomes under given conditions. This preserves both divine faithfulness and the reality of tragedy.
“Work together” — process reading:
The phrase indicates cooperation rather than causation. God does not cause all things but works relationally with creaturely actions and natural processes.
Romans 8:29
“Those whom he foreknew he also predestined…”
Process reading:
Cobb interprets foreknowledge relationally rather than as exhaustive foreordination. God knows persons as possibilities-in-relationship. Predestination refers to God’s intention that humans grow into Christlike relationality, not that individual histories are scripted in advance.
What this shows about Cobb’s interpretive method
- Divine power is persuasive and relational rather than coercive
- Scripture presupposes an open future compatible with modern science
- God is deeply involved in history while remaining responsive to creaturely freedom
This reflects Cobb’s explicit claim that contemporary science requires theology to abandon static metaphysics and recover the Bible’s dynamic portrayal of God’s ongoing interaction with the world, as argued in Process Theology and the Bible: How Science Has Changed Our View of God.
