Several months ago, I intended to post a blog article today titled “Happy 100th 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.)
_____
*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 98th 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.
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