For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes, contrary to the forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible).
Various theological and philosophical aspects have been expanded and developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb, Eugene H. Peters, and David Ray Griffin.
[5] A characteristic of process theology each of these thinkers shared was a rejection of metaphysics that privilege "being" over "becoming", particularly those of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
Process theology soon influenced a number of Jewish theologians including Rabbis Max Kadushin, Milton Steinberg, Levi A. Olan, Harry Slominsky, and, to a lesser degree, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Contemporary Jewish theologians who advocate some form of process theology include Bradley Shavit Artson,[7] Lawrence A. Englander, William E. Kaufman, Harold Kushner, Anson Laytner, Michael Lerner, Gilbert S. Rosenthal, Lawrence Troster, Donald B. Rossoff, Burton Mindick, and Nahum Ward.
[citation needed] Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have applied process theology to the New Thought variant of Christianity.
[citation needed] Whitehead's classical statement is a set of antithetical statements that attempt to avoid self-contradiction by shifting them from a set of oppositions into a contrast: Henry Young combines black theology and process theology in his book Hope in Process.
[18] Contrary to Christian orthodoxy, the Christ of mainstream process theology is not the mystical and historically unique union of divine and human natures in one hypostasis, the eternal Logos of God incarnated and identifiable as the man Jesus.
[20][need quotation to verify] A criticism of process theology is that it offers a too severely diminished conception of God’s power.
[27] Mindful of this, process theology makes several important distinctions between different kinds of power.
[28] Coercive power is the kind that is exerted by one physical body over another, such as one billiard ball hitting another, or one arm twisting another.
It is only after the persuasive act of self-motion is successful that an entity can even begin to exercise coercive control over other finite physical bodies.
One classic exchange over the issue of divine power is between philosophers Frederick Sontag and John K. Roth and process theologian David Ray Griffin.
Griffin's response was as follows: One of the stronger complaints from Sontag and Roth is that, given the enormity of evil in the world, a deity that is [merely] doing its best is not worthy of worship.
To refer back to the point about revelation: is this kind of power worship consistent with the Christian claim that divinity is decisively revealed in Jesus?
Rather than see God as one who unilaterally coerces other beings, judges and punishes them, and is completely unaffected by the joys and sorrows of others, process theologians see God as the one who persuades the universe to love and peace, is supremely affected by even the tiniest of joys and the smallest of sorrows, and is able to love all beings despite the most heinous acts they may commit.