Challenges of Process Theology in the Ṣadrāʼī Framework: A Critical Re-examination of “Evil, Free Will, and Creation ex Nihilo”

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Theology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

10.22108/coth.2026.146329.2021

Abstract

This study critically re-examines Process Theology’s challenges concerning evil, free will, and creation ex nihilo through Mullā Ṣadrā’s Transcendent Theosophy. Process Theology denies divine omnipotence and creation ex nihilo, reducing God to a partial cause-resulting in irreparable metaphysical flaws. On evil, it commits the compositional fallacy by treating evil as an existential reality that limits God, while Ṣadrā demonstrates evil’s privative nature and its necessity for superior goods within existence’s hierarchical order. On free will, Process Theology reduces divine power to mere persuasion and neglects vertical causality, wrongly making human agency independent of God; Ṣadrā instead situates free will within vertical causality as a manifestation of divine will. On creation, rejecting creation ex nihilo and eternalizing the world violates God’s complete causality and degrades His ontological status. Ṣadrā resolves this by distinguishing essential origination-ontological dependence on God-from temporal origination, thus reconciling creation with cosmic perpetuity. The study concludes that Process Theology’s reductionism stems from ignoring existence’s hierarchical complexity and the vertical Creator-creature relation. In contrast, Transcendent Theosophy, through substantial motion, gradation of existence, and causal hierarchy, offers coherent resolutions that preserve divine omnipotence, uphold human freedom, and provide a wise theodicy without metaphysical reductionism.

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Comparative Theology

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 11 July 2026

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