God, Literature and Process Thought edited by Darren J. N. Middleton (Ashgate) This book explores and evaluates evolutionarily theism which asserts that God subject to change as humanity is subject to, change charting the way it surfaces as a theme in classic, modern, and postmodern forms of creative writing philosophical theology, and cultural theoryv. Probing texts by process thinkers such as Whitehead, Bergson, Teilhard, and Hartshorne, as well as the literary of figures such as Aeschylus, Byron, Goethe, Greene, Joyce, Kazantzak Levertov, and Shakespeare, the twelve scholars in this volume reflect on God and the world, on reading and interpretation, and on being and becoming. The contributors emerge with fresh perspectives that promise to make a substantial contribution to the field of literature and religion today.
Although it is true to say that the field of literature and theology is growing and becoming more sophisticated and articulate, it is equally correct to say that few scholars working in the particular area of process studies have explored the potentially fruitful exchange between process thought and creative writing. A routine search of the library at the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, reveals very little; in fact, only a handful of articles and book chapters exist. Having said this, the researcher who digs beneath the surface of literary art classic, modern and postmodern uncovers a treasure trove of items, a fecund series of resources for thinking theologically in a relational world. Consider the English novelist David Lodge. One of Lodge's most engaging characters, Bernard Walsh, is a selfproclaimed agnostic theologian, who has a professional interest in Paradise. But, having come to Hawaii to escort his reluctant father Jack to the deathbed of Jack's estranged sister, he does not, like his fellow tourists, hope for a heavenly holiday. Here is Bernard's opinion of, and challenge to, process theology, culled from Lodge's 1991 novel, Paradise News:
Bernard sat at his desk and took out his notes on a book about process theology he was reviewing for Eschatological Review. The God of process theology, he read, is the cosmic lover. `His transcendence is in His sheer faithfulness to Himself in love, in His inexhaustibility as lover, and in His capacity for endless adaptation to circumstances in which His love may be active.' Really? Who says? The theologian says. And who cares, apart from other theologians? Not the people choosing their holidays from the travel agent's brochures. Not the drivers of the car transporters. It often seemed to Bernard that the discourse of much modem radical theology was just as implausible and unfounded as the orthodoxy it had displaced, but nobody had noticed because nobody read it except those with a professional stake in its continuation. God, Literature and Process Thought outlines and promotes the novel view that there is much to be gained when those who value the insights of process thought `encounter' the many and varied writers of literature and literary theory, and vice versa, and it celebrates process poesis, a fresh way of reflecting theologically and philosophically that takes account of literary forms, and which promises to transform creatively the very structure of process thought today.
In the last two decades, scholars have written some important books and a substantial number of essays on process thought and science, economics, spirituality, psychology, and theology, Christian as well as Jewish, but a book devoted to the alliance between process thought and literature has not been written or published. God, Literature and Process Thought seeks to correct this oversight. It does this by providing, in one volume, an instructive tool for studying a variety of process thinkers in conversation with numerous literary theorists and artists. Our book is divided into three parts. In Part I, four scholars reflect on the dynamic interplay that occurs when process thought and literary theory are brought together in a creative nexus of sorts. In Part II, seven writers attempt to serve as fairminded arbiters of a lively exchange between various process thinkers (Whitehead, Bergson, Teilhard and Hartshorne) and numerous creative writers (Aeschylus, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Goethe, Greene, Joyce, Kazantzakis, Levertov, Schelling and Shakespeare). Finally, in Part III, one writer with training in process theology offers her own poetic reflections on the processes of reality, thereby suggesting that our anthology is capable of embodying the very thing it celebrates: process poesis.

In Novel Theology: Nikos Kazantzakis's Encounter With Whiteheadian Process Theism, Darren Middleton employs the narrative fiction of Kazantzakis and the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead to reveal a common philosophy that shaped both Kazantzakis's and Whitehead's understanding of God through texts of their literature and theology. By comparing specific themes in the novels by Kazantzakis and the works of Whiteheadian process theologians, Middleton reveals that the literature and theology constantly deconstruct each other and suggests that this deconstructive assignment is one that is, itself, a process. Novel Theology is insightful, thought-provoking reading and highly recommended for students and scholars of literature and theology, and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the works of Nikos Kazantzakis, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and process thought as found in theology and literature.