Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. (born March 22, 1930) is an American philosopher and

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

. Bracken is a proponent of

process philosophy Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classi ...

and process theology of Alfred North Whitehead and

Charles Hartshorne Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...

. Much of his work is devoted to a synthesis of revealed religion and Christian

trinitarian The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Fa ...

doctrines with a revised process theology. Bracken introduced a field theoretic approach to process metaphysics.

Life

Bracken was born on 22 March 1930 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

.Curriculum vitae at Xavier University
/ref> Bracken is Emeritus Professor of Theology at

Xavier University Xavier University ( ) is a private Jesuit university in Cincinnati and Evanston (Cincinnati), Ohio. It is the sixth-oldest Catholic and fourth-oldest Jesuit university in the United States. Xavier has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,860 stud ...

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. He received his PhD from the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemb ...

in Germany in 1968, and taught at University of Saint Mary of the Lake Mundelein Seminary in Illinois (1968–1974), and at

Marquette University Marquette University () is a private Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Martin Henni, the first Bishop of the diocese of M ...

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

(1974–1982), before becoming Chairman of the Theology Department at Xavier in 1982.

Work

Bracken is the author and/or editor of 11 books and wrote about 150 articles in academic journals. He brief summarized his approach in a book review in 2007: ''This is why in my own rethinking of Whitehead's metaphysics I presumed from the start that his metaphysical categories needed revision in order to accommodate Christian belief in God as Trinity. With this in mind, I soon realized that Whitehead's key category of "society" needed further development. A "society," after all, must be more than an aggregate of actual occasions with a "common element of form" (PR 1968, 34) if philosophical atomism is to be avoided. My own solution was to reinterpret a Whiteheadian society as an enduring structured field of activity for successive generations of constituent actual occasions. Thus understood, a Whiteheadian "society" serves both to legitimate a trinitarian process-oriented understanding of God and to make Whitehead's philosophy an even stronger social ontology than he himself envisioned. That is, "the final real things of which the world is made up" are not simply actual occasions but the societies into which they spontaneously aggregate.''Bracken, J. A. 2007. ''David Ray Griffin - Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for Its Contemporary Relevance''. Notre Dame Philosophical Review
fulltext online
/ref>

Bibliography

Books by Bracken

* 1972. ''Freiheit und Kausalität bei Schelling''. Alber Verlag, . * 1979. ''What Are They Saying about the Trinity?''. Paulist Press, . * 1985. ''The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process and Community''. University Press of America, . * 1991. ''Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology''. Associated University Presses,
Google Books
. * 1995. ''The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and West''. Orbis Books,
Google Books
. * 1997 (edited by J. Bracken and M. Suchocki). ''Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology God". Continuum Publ., . * 2001. ''The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship''. Eerdmans,
Google Books
. * 2005 (edited by J. Bracken). '' World Without End: Christian Eschatology from a Process Perspective''. Eerdmans,
Google Books
. * 2006. ''Christianity and Process Thought: Spirituality for a Changing World''. Templeton Foundation Press,
Google Books
. * 2008. ''God: Three Who Are One''. Liturgical Press,
Google Books
. * 2009. ''Subjectivity, Objectivity and Intersubjectivity: A New Paradigm for Religion and Science''. Templeton Foundation Press, . * 2012. ''Does God Roll Dice? Divine Providence for a World in the Making'' Liturgical Press, - * 2014. ''The World in the Trinity: Open-Ended Systems in Science and Religion'' Fortress Press, -

Articles by Bracken

* 1974. ''The Holy Trinity as a Community of Divine Persons, I''. The Heythrop Journal 15(2): 166-182
PDF
* 1974. ''The Holy Trinity as a Community of Divine Persons, II''. The Heythrop Journal 15(3): 257-270
PDF
* 1978. ''Process Philosophy and Trinitarian Theology'' Process Studies 3(4): 217-230
fulltext online
. * 1989. ''Energy-Events and Fields''. Process Studies 18(3): 153-165
fulltext online
. * 1998. ''Revising Process Metaphysics in Response to Ian Barbour's Critique''. Zygon 33(3): 405-414
Abstract
. * 2000. ''Prehending God in and through the World'' Process Studies 29(1): 4-15
fulltext online
. * 2001. ''Absolute Nothingness and The Divine Matrix''. The International Journal for Field-Being 1(1), Part 1, Article No. 6
PDF
* 2006. ''Bodily Resurrection and the Dialectic of Spirit and Matter'
Online Essay at Metanexus
* 2007. ''Space and Time from a Neo-Whiteheadian Perspective''. Zygon 42(1): 41-48
Abstract
. * 2010. ''God, Chance and Purpose: Implications for Process Theology.'' Process Studies 39/1, 106-16. * 2010. ''Feeling Our Way Forward: Continuity and Discontinuity Within the Cosmic Process.'' Theology and Science 8/3, 319-32. * 2010. ''Teilhard, Whitehead, and a Metaphysics of Intersubjectivity, Rediscovering Teilhard's Fire'' Kathleen Duffy, S.S.J. (Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph's University Press), 163-71. * 2012. ''Whiteheadian Societies as Open-Ended Systems and Open-Ended Systems as Whiteheadian Societies.'' Process Studies 41/1, 64-85. * 2013. ''Veiled Reality and Structural Realism.'' Theology and Science 11/1, 32-43 * 2013. ''Emergence: A New Approach to the Perennial Problem of the One and the Many.'' Journal of Arts and Humanities 2/1, 25-33. * 2013. ''Actual Entities and Societies, Gene Mutations and Cell Development: Implications for a New World View.'' Process Studies 42/1, 64-76. * 2013. ''Actions and Agents: Natural and Supernatural Reconsidered.'' Religion and Science 48/4, 1001-13. * 2014. ''Whiteheadian Societies and Peirce's Law of Mind: Actuality and Potentiality in the Cosmic Process.'' Theology and Science 12/4, 396-412. * 2014. ''Whiteheadian Metaphysics, General Relativity, and String Theory.'' Process Studies 43/2, 129-43. * 2014. ''Panentheism in the Context of Theology and Science Dialogue.'' "Open Theology", vol. 1, 1-11. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/opth-2014-0001 * 2018. ''Divine-Human Intersubjectivity and the Problem of Evil.'' "Open Theology", vol. 4, 60–70. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2018-0005.

Works about Bracken and his thought

* Cecil, Paul Lewis 2000. ''A Response to Joseph Bracken’s "Prehending God in and through the World"''. Process Studies 29(2): 358-364
fulltext online
. * Marc A. Pugliese, 2011. ''The One, the Many and the Trinity: Joseph A. Bracken and the Challenge of Process Metaphysics''. The Catholic University of America Press. * Marc A. Pugliese & Gloria L. Schaab, SSJ 2012. ''Seeking Common Ground: Evaluation and Critique of Joseph Bracken's Comprehensive World View''. Marquette University Press.

Notes

External links

Faculty webpage of Xavier University
(Curriculum vitae a
PDF
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bracken, Joseph A. 1930 births Xavier University alumni Xavier University people 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers 20th-century American Roman Catholic theologians 21st-century American Roman Catholic theologians Metaphysicians Process theologians Seminary academics Living people 20th-century American Jesuits 21st-century American Jesuits 21st-century American non-fiction writers