Happy New Year!
I found this quote (unattributed) in Father Clark’s book The One and the Many: “The ancient and medieval world is interested in being, the static essences of things; the modern world is interested in becoming, the change, growth, development of things.” p. 111
Clarke continues: “In a word, what is central is process, becoming, not being.”
It very clearly is a school of thought within philosophy with origins in Greek philosophy, notably Heraclitus. In modern times Bergson and Whitehead were big process thinkers, but most especially Whitehead who developed an entire cosmology around the idea. Charles Hartshorne, also important in process philosophy, was a follower of Whitehead but made his own contributions.
Whitehead and Hartshorne were theists but not Christians. Interestingly, Whitehead, who collaborated with Bertand Russell in writing the Principia Mathematica, a major work, toyed with becoming Catholic for a time. Eventually he and Hartshorne came to espouse panentheism, the idea that everything is in God. Hartshorne, along with Norman Malcolm, discovered St. Anselm’s modal ontological argument and championed it.
Process philosophy, while it has some important insights, is not Christian philosophy. It teaches that God is in time, just like you and me and all His udder critters. Also process guys hold that even God doesn’t know the future.
Protestantism has a fair number of adherents, notably Greg Boyd, and process ideas are becoming more prevalent in Catholic circles.
