Whitehead & Teilhard: Convergences, Divergences, Integrations

Dr. Andrew M. Davis is an American process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of the cosmos. He is Research and Academic Director for the Center for Process Studies, where he researches, writes, teaches, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought. An advocate of metaphysics and meaning in a hospitable universe, he approaches philosophy as the endeavor to systematically think through what reality must be like—because we are a part of it. He is author, editor, and co-editor of nearly a dozen books, including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (2020); Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy (2022); Metaphysics of Exo-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology (2023); and Whitehead and Teilhard: From Organism to Omega (2025). His forthcoming book is a comprehensive yet conversational introduction to Alfred North Whitehead titled Whitehead’s Universe: A Prismatic Introduction. Follow his work at andrewmdavis.info.

Catherine Keller is the George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University. She teaches courses in process, political, and ecological theology, and practices theology as a relation between ancient hints of ultimacy and current matters of urgency. Within and beyond Christian conversation, she has mobilized the transdisciplinary potential of feminist, philosophical, and pluralist intersections with religion. Her books include Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public, Intercarnations: On the Possibility of Theology, and Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement. Her seminal work, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, was published in second edition February 2026.

Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of twenty-three books and over two-hundred articles in scholarly journals in philosophy, theology, classics, and literature. Among his books are Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). His latest book is The Way of Reason in Religion and Politics: The Philosophy of Franklin I. Gamwell (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2026). He is the Editor of the journal Process Studies and is Past-President of the Metaphysical Society of America.

Donald Wayne Viney, Phd earned degrees in philosophy from Colorado State University (BA, 1977) and the University of Oklahoma (MA, 1979 and PhD, 1982). He is the first three-time recipient of the title of University Professor at Pittsburg State University (Kansas) having taught philosophy and religion at PSU from 1984 until 2022 before becoming Professor Emeritus. Professor Viney publishes mostly in the areas of the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion with special interest in the works of Charles Hartshorne, Jules Lequyer, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He sits on the editorial boards of Process Studies, The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, and The Midwest Quarterly. In his spare time, Viney performs and composes music. Samples of his publications and his music are available here. 

Elaine Padilla, PhD is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Latinx/Latin American Studies. Padilla constructively interweaves current philosophical discourse with Christianity, Latin American and Latino/a religious thought, mysticism, ecology, gender, and race. She is the author of Divine Enjoyment: A Theology of Passion and Exuberance, and co-editor of a three-volume project with Peter C. Phan, Theology and Migration in World Christianity; Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology; Theology of Migration in the Abrahamic Religions; and Christianities in Migration: The Global Perspective. She has also published numerous articles and chapters, and is currently drafting a manuscript provisionally titled, The Darkness of Being, in which she explores views on the soul and interiority with implications for race and gender. 

Ilia Delio, OSF is a Systematic-Constructive theologian who works at the interface of science, religion and culture. She holds a doctorate in Pharmacology from Rutgers University, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and a doctorate in Historical Theology from Fordham University. She is the author of twenty-six books including The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin and the Relational Whole, The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science and the Human Journey which won the 2022 Gold Nautilus Book Award, and Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, a finalist for the 2019 Michael Ramsey Prize. She is founder and Executive Director of the World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture.

John Becker, PhD is a Lecturer of Religious Studies at California State University, Long Beach. In 2017, he received the International Process Network’s Young Scholar Award. He is a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies and a Research Fellow for the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, USA. His research interests include process thought, comparative theology (Buddhism-Christianity), religions and ecology, and religious pluralism. He is co-editor of Process Thought and Roman Catholicism.

John Haught, PhD is Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University, where he taught in the Department of Theology from 1970 to 2005 and served as chair from 1990 to 1995. His field is systematic theology, with a particular interest in the questions that arise where science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion meet. He is the author of 24 books, among them God After Einstein: What’s Really Going on in the Universe? (Yale University Press, 2022), The Cosmic Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Orbis, 2021), and The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe (Yale University Press, 2017). His writing emphasizes hope, depth, and the unfinished character of the universe, offering a vision that resists both reductionist materialism and anti-scientific retreat. Haught lectures internationally and has received the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion, the Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and an honorary doctorate from Louvain University in Belgium.

Kathleen Duffy, SJ, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Physics, Director of the Institute for Religion and Science at Chestnut Hill College, President of the American Teilhard Association, Associate Editor of Teilhard Studies, and serves on the Board of Cosmos and Creation. Kathleen is the recipient of the Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, October 18, 2009; was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Catholic Witness, St. Hubert High School in 2005; and received the John Templeton Foundation Quality and Excellence in Teaching Award in 1998. Her current research interests concern the religious essays of Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his spirituality, and the relationship of his synthesis to modern developments in science. She has published award-winning books including Teilhard’s Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution; Teilhard’s Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution; an edited volume of essays about Teilhard’s life and work entitled Rediscovering Teilhard’s Fire, as well as many book chapters and articles. Kathleen also guides evening, weekend, and week-long retreats on topics related to Teilhard’s life and work.

Dr. Matthew David Segall is the Director of the Process & Science Network, and a transdisciplinary researcher and teacher applying process philosophy across the natural and social sciences, including the study of consciousness. He is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. Matt is author of Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead (Integral Imprint, 2023) and Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (SacraSage Press, 2021). Follow his work at Footnotes2Plato.com

Paolo Gamberini, PhD was born in Ravenna (Italy) in 1960 and entered the Jesuit Order in 1983. He had his MPhil in Milan at the Sacred Heart University. He studied Theology in Germany (Frankfurt/M and Tübingen). He received his doctorate at the Philosophisch-theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen working on the concept of Analogy in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel. He has been working since 1985 in the Ecumenical movement especially with Anglicans and Lutherans. He has been attending in 1988, 1998 and 2008 the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury – England as a journalist for La Civiltà Cattolica. From 1992 to 2014 he has been teaching at the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy (Naples), and since 2005 he has been Full Professor (professore straordinario). He has been Visiting Professors in many Jesuit Institutions in the US: Loyola University of Chicago, Holy Cross College (Worcester – MA), Boston College-STM and Jesuit School of Theology (Berkeley, CA). From August 2015 to June 2018 he has been Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco.

Robert Nicastro is a theologian and author whose work explores the intersection of religion, science, and technology. Drawing on evolutionary theology and the philosophy of emergence, he investigates how technological development is reshaping human identity, planetary consciousness, and the future of religious meaning. His work seeks to articulate a more integrated vision of humanity’s place within an evolving cosmos and to cultivate forms of meaning capable of addressing the fragmentation of modern life. His doctoral dissertation, The Future as Sole Support: Metaphysics, Hyperphysics, and the Theology of Teilhard de Chardin, offers a reinterpretation of Teilhard’s cosmic vision as a compelling metaphysical framework for addressing the complex challenges of the twenty-first century.

Sheri D. Kling, PhD is an interdisciplinary scholar who explores how human beings move from fragmentation toward belonging through soul formation, relational worldviews, and communities of spiritual practice. Integrating Jungian depth psychology, relational theology, human sciences, and empirical research on meaning and human flourishing, she serves as Director of Spiritual Formation and Research for the Center for Process Studies, where she leads the John Templeton Foundation-funded initiative Modern Meaning: Spiritual Yearning and the Quest for a Flourishing World. She is a faculty member of the Haden Institute and Graduate Theological Foundation, adjunct faculty at Claremont School of Theology, and serves in the advisory circle for the World Institute for Science, Religion, and Culture. Dr. Kling is the author of A Process Spirituality: Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation, has contributed to several additional volumes, and is a frequent keynote speaker who leads courses, concerts, and spiritual retreats exploring spirituality, transformation, and human flourishing. She can be found online at https://sherikling.com/.