Journal of European Baptist Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 2007

rm and matter, culture influences the very content of faith, not only the manner of its expression.^ This panentheistic model extended to the whole of reality also accounts for the problem of God’s suffering. There is no division between the holy and the created; God accompanies man even in exile in order to be saved with him afterwards (rise from the dead to a new life). As Waclaw Hryniewicz argues: God is somehow affected by the tragedy of man. He partakes in the history of the world as the great Fellow Sufferer who understands. Contemporary philosophers and theologians do not see anything offensive in viewing God as capable of suffering along with us. We return to the old idea of theopaschism. A God who is not capable of ~ 2 Hryniewicz, Hermeneutyka w dialogu, p. 37. 23 See Michael E. Lodahl, Shekhinah/Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Religion (New York: Paulist Press, 1992); see also Norman Pittinger, The Christian Church as a Social Process (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971), p. 131. 24 Cobb and Griffin, Process Theology, p. 29. 23 J.B. Cobb, Jr, ‘Faith and Culture’, in James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb (eds.). The New Hermeneutic, vol. II (New York-Evanston-London: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 225. 24 Journal of European Baptist Studies suffering cannot be close to suffering creatures either and, 26 consequently, cannot truly love them." In conclusion, it must be stressed that the theologies outlined above display a number of points of convergence. This refers, above all, to the issues of religious pluralism, the complementariness of science and religion, the relational character of God, the participation of man in the creation of reality (which entails a certain limitedness of God) and the organic relationship between the Creator and creation. Obviously, apart from numerous similarities, the views of Cobb and Hryniewicz differ considerably at certain points, for example regarding the future (the Kingdom of God on earth, God’s eternal memory, universal salvation of the creation in heaven), but they still remain noticeably convergent on the philosophical level. Even though Waclaw Hryniewicz cannot be justifiably regarded as a process theologian, his reflection doubtlessly goes beyond the confines of classical theism, also in the direction once set by Alfred North Whitehead and his process theology. The Revd Dr hab Miroslaw Patalon, is a professor of Religious Education in the Institute for Religious Pedagogy at the University of Gdansk, Poland. ~ 6 Hryniewicz, Dramat nadziei zbawienia, p. 49. On Being Called-out Strangers in the Land 25 On Being Called-out Strangers in the Land: Some Reflections on Contemporary Lithuanian Baptist Spirituality 1 2 I come from one of the tiniest Baptist Unions within the Baptist World Alliance. The Baptist Union of Lithuania consists of eight churches and some 400 members. Many of them are Lithuanian-speaking, som