Remembering John Cobb and His Transdisciplinary Theology

 Several months ago, I intended to post a blog article today titled “Happy 100^th Birthday, Dr. Cobb!” He was alive and well at that time, but sadly, he passed away about six weeks ago. Still, I am remembering him today/tomorrow and I hope you will enjoy learning a little more about him and his theological thinking. 

John Boswell Cobb Jr. was born on February 9, 1925, and passed away on the day after Christmas. He was a “missionary kid” (MK), born in Kobe, Japan, to parents who were Methodist missionaries.

Until age 15, John lived primarily in Kobe and received most of his early education in the multi-ethnic Canadian Academy in that central Japan city. (Several of the Baptist MKs I knew in Japan, including the two children of Dickson Yagi [introduced below] went to high school at Canadian Academy.)

Dr. Cobb taught theology at the Claremont School of Theology (in California) from 1958 until his retirement in 1990. In 2014 he became the first theologian elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his interdisciplinary work in ecology, economics, and biology.

At least 25 years ago, Dr. Cobb moved to Pilgrim Place, a retirement home in Claremont. Thinking Friend Dickson Yagi was a faculty colleague of mine at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. Not long after Dickson returned to the U.S., Dr. Cobb invited him to retire at Pilgrim Place, which he did in 2002.

Last August, I wrote to Dickson regarding Dr. Cobb. Dickson responded, “John Cobb’s brain is as sharp as ever. ... He lives in the partial nursing quarters now, so I don’t see him very often. But he still speaks in public .... He is a very courteous and pleasant, intelligent man.”*¹

John Cobb has been influential in a wide range of disciplines, including biology, ecology, economics, social ethics, and theology. I find his thought and writing quite valuable because of how he sees these disciplines as being interrelated and overlapping.

As Wikipedia correctly states, “Although Cobb is most often described as a theologian, the overarching tendency of his thought has been toward the integration of many different areas of knowledge.” Indeed, this sort of integration is what theology ought to be but so often hasn’t been.

Ecological themes have been pervasive in Cobb's work since 1969 (!), when he turned his attention to the ecological crisis. He became convinced that environmental issues constituted humanity’s most pressing problem. His book Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology was published in 1971.

In 1973, Cobb and his colleague David Ray Griffin (1939~2022) co-founded the Center for Process Studies (CPS) at Claremont.*² Three years later, they published Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, a book of singular importance.

In the Foreword, the authors reject much of the traditional theistic understanding of God, according to which “God seems to be the archetype of the dominant, inflexible, emotional, completely independent (read “strong”) male. Process theology denies the existence of this God” (p. 10).*³

Cobb published Becoming a Thinking Christian in 1993. The first paragraph of the Preface states that the book is for people who are lay Christians “in one of the oldline Protestant churches.”

Cobb perceived that many intelligent people in the churches “are still operating out of a simplistic view of faith. Too many have been led to assume that faith is incompatible with intellectual challenge and integrity. … that is the problem to which this book is addressed.”

I fully agree with Cobb’s expressed purpose for that book. In fact, it was just the following year that I started writing a somewhat similar book provisionally titled “Christian Faith and Intellectual Honesty.”

Because of soon being elected to heavy administration responsibilities at the educational institution where I had taught university and seminary classes since 1968, I was, sadly, unable to make much progress on that writing project.

My strong desire, as well as Cobb’s, is for all Christians to be thinking Christians—as well as for all those who are no longer, or never were, Christians to be thinking people. Most of my blog readers are, thankfully, such people, and many of them are on my Thinking Friends mailing list.

I hope some of you will now go to a library or to Amazon.com (or elsewhere) and obtain a copy of Cobb’s book. (There are several “very good” used copies available at Amazon for less than $7.00, including postage.)

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*¹ I heard Dr. Cobb speak in Japan (in 1995) as well as in the U.S., and I visited with him personally on both occasions. In the 1980s when I taught at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Cobb attended an academic meeting there.  At the close of the meeting, I had the privilege of driving him to the Kansas City International Airport and much enjoyed the conversation we had on that occasion. I fully agree with Dickson’s closing words about him.

*² In 1974, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (b. 1933) received her Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate School. A few years later, she authored God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (1982, 1989). After teaching in various universities, she was a faculty member at Claremont School of Divinity from 1990 until her retirement in 2002. During that time, she was also a co-director of CPS. At an academic meeting in 2006, I had the opportunity to hear her speak and to have a private conversation with her.

*³ The paragraph on the previous page where they reject the idea of God as a “controlling power” is very similar to the fundamental idea of Thomas Jay Oord, whom I introduced in my January 10 blog post.

Note: Dr. Cobb’s last book was published in 2023, shortly after his 98^th birthday, and much of that book was written in 2022. It is titled simply Confessions and is a very personal—and timely—book. I bought the $10 Kindle version last year and carefully read the 200+ pages. I highly recommend it.