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, employing
Alfred North Whitehead's transdisciplinary philosophical framework as his guiding insight. As a result, Cobb has done work in a broad range of fields.
Philosophy of education Cobb consistently opposed the splitting of education and knowledge into discrete and insulated disciplines and departments. He believed that the university model encourages excessive abstraction because each specialized area of study defines its own frame of reference and then tends to ignore the others, discouraging
interdisciplinary dialogue and inhibiting a broad understanding of the world. Theology should once again be tied to ethical questions and practical, everyday concerns, as well as a theoretical understanding of the world. In service to this vision, Cobb consistently sought to integrate knowledge from biology, physics, economics, and other disciplines into his theological and philosophical work.
Constructive postmodern philosophy Cobb was convinced that
Alfred North Whitehead was right in viewing both nature and human beings as more than just purposeless machines. Rather than seeing nature as purely mechanical and human consciousness as a strange exception which must be explained away, Whiteheadian naturalism went in the opposite direction by arguing that subjective experience of the world should inform a view of the rest of nature as more than just mechanical. In short, nature should be seen as having a
subjective and
purposive aspect that deserves attention. Later, when
deconstructionists began to describe their thought as "postmodern", Whiteheadians changed their own label to "
constructive postmodernism". Like its deconstructionist counterpart, constructive postmodernism arose partly in response to dissatisfaction with
Cartesian mind–matter dualism, which viewed matter as an inert machine and the human mind as wholly different in nature. While modern science has uncovered voluminous evidence against this idea, Cobb argues that dualistic assumptions continue to persist: On the whole, dualism was accepted by the general culture. To this day it shapes the structure of the university, with its division between the sciences and the humanities. Most people, whether they articulate it or not, view the world given to them in sight and touch as material, while they consider themselves to transcend that purely material status. In particular, they have argued for a new Whiteheadian metaphysics based on
events rather than
substances. In this formulation, it is incorrect to say that a person or thing ("substance") has a fundamental
identity that remains constant, and that any changes to the person or thing are secondary to what it is. Instead, each moment in a person's life ("event") is seen as a new actuality, thus asserting that continual change and transformation are fundamental, while static identities are far less important. This view more easily reconciles itself with certain findings of modern science, such as evolution and
wave–particle duality.
Environmental ethics Ecological themes have been pervasive in Cobb's work since 1969, when he turned his attention to the
ecological crisis. In the book, he argued for an ecological worldview that acknowledges the continuity between human beings and other living things, as well as their
mutual dependence. He also proposed that Christianity specifically needed to appropriate knowledge from the biological sciences in order to undercut its
anthropocentrism (human-centeredness) and devaluation of the non-human world.
Critique of growth-oriented economics Cobb's economic critiques arose as a natural extension of his interest in ecological issues. He recognized that he could not write about an ecological, sustainable, and just society without including discussion of economics. As part of his investigation into why economic policies so frequently worsened the ecological situation, in the 1980s Cobb decided to re-evaluate
gross national product and
gross domestic product as measures of economic progress. Together with his son, Clifford Cobb, he developed an alternative model, the
Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, The name of the metric would later change to
genuine progress indicator. A recent (2013) article has shown that global GPI per capita peaked in 1978, meaning that the
social and environmental costs of
economic growth have outweighed the benefits since that time. Cobb also co-authored a book with
Herman Daly in 1989 entitled
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, Environment, and a Sustainable Future, which outlined policy changes intended to create a society based on community and
ecological balance. In 1992,
For the Common Good earned Cobb and Daly the
Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. In his later years, Cobb described growth-oriented economic systems as the "prime example of corruption" in American culture and religion: "Since the rise of modern economics, Christians have been forced to give up their criticism of greed, because the economists said 'greed is good, and if you really want to help people, be as greedy as possible.'" Cobb saw such values as being in direct opposition with the message of
Jesus, which in many places explicitly criticizes the accumulation of wealth. Because of Christianity's widespread acceptance of such economic values, Cobb saw Christians as far less confident in proclaiming the values of Jesus. In the area of religion and biology, he co-wrote
The Liberation of Life: From the Cell to the Community with Australian
geneticist Charles Birch in 1981. The book critiqued the dominant
biological model of mechanism, arguing that it leads to the study of organisms in abstraction from their environments. Cobb and Birch argue instead for an "ecological model" which draws no sharp lines between the living and non-living, or between an organism and its environment. The book also argues for an idea of evolution in which
adaptive behavior can lead to
genetic changes. Cobb and Birch stress that a species "
co-evolves with its environment" and that in this way intelligent purpose plays a role in evolution: Evolution is not a process of ruthless competition directed to some goal of ever-increasing power or complexity. Such an attitude, by failing to be adaptive, is, in fact, not conducive to evolutionary success. A species co-evolves with its environment. Equally, there is no stable, harmonious nature to whose wisdom humanity should simply submit. Intelligent purpose plays a role in adaptive behaviour, and as environments change its role is increased.
The Liberation of Life stresses that
all life (not just human life) is purposeful and that it aims for the realization of richer experience. Cobb and Birch develop the idea of "trusting life" as a religious impulse, rather than attempting to achieve a settled, perfected social structure that does not allow for change and evolution.
Religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue Cobb participated in extensive
interreligious and interfaith dialogue, most notably with
Masao Abe, a
Japanese Buddhist of the
Kyoto School of philosophy. Cobb's explicit aim was to gain ideas and insights from other religions with an eye toward augmenting and "universalizing" Christianity. Cobb writes: ... it is the mission of Christianity to become a universal faith in the sense of taking into itself the alien truths that others have realized. This is no mere matter of addition. It is instead a matter of creative transformation. An untransformed Christianity, that is, a Christianity limited to its own
parochial traditions, cannot fulfill its mission of realizing the universal meaning of Jesus Christ. In short, Cobb’s work does not conceive of dialogue as useful primarily to convert or be converted, but rather as useful in order to transform both parties mutually, allowing for a broadening of ideas and a reimagining of each faith in order that they might better face the challenges of the modern world. Cobb was active in formulating his own theories of
religious pluralism, partly in response to another
Claremont Graduate University professor,
John Hick. Cobb's pluralism has sometimes been identified as a kind of "deep" pluralism or, alternately, as a "complementary" pluralism. He believes that there are actually three distinct religious ultimates: (1) God, (2)
Creativity/
Emptiness/
Nothingness/
Being-itself, and (3) the
cosmos/universe. Cobb believed that all of these elements are necessary and present in some form in every religion but that different faiths tend to stress one ultimate over the others. Viewed in this way, different religions may be seen to complement each other by providing insight into different religious ultimates. Cobb's pluralism thus avoids the criticism of conflating religions that are actually very different (for instance,
Buddhism and Christianity) while still affirming the possible truths of both. In the late 1950s, Cobb and Claremont professor
James Robinson decided that the time had come to end this one-sidedness and move to authentic dialogue between American and European theologians. To establish real mutuality, they organized a series of conferences of leading theologians in Germany and the United States and published a series of volumes called "New Frontiers in Theology." After writing several books surveying contemporary forms of Protestantism, Cobb turned in the mid-1960s to more original work which sought to bring
Alfred North Whitehead's ideas into the contemporary American Protestant scene. Cobb aimed to reconstruct a Christian vision that was more compatible with modern knowledge and more ready to engage with today's pluralistic world. This "substantialist" way of thinking necessitates a
mind–matter dualism, in which
matter and
mind are two fundamentally different kinds of entities. It also encourages seeing relations between entities as being unimportant to what the entity is "in itself". In contrast to this view, Cobb followed Whitehead in attributing primacy to events and processes rather than
substances. but also to other disciplines, including biology, physics, and economics. In fact, Cobb did not shy away even from re-imaging what is now regarded as the "traditional" Christian notion of God. He did not believe that God is
omnipotent in the sense of having unilateral control over all events, since Cobb sees reconciling total coercive power with
love and goodness to be an impossible task. Cobb’s work solves the
problem of evil by denying God's omnipotence, stressing instead that God's power is persuasive rather than coercive, that God can influence creatures but not determine what they become or do. For Cobb, God's role is to liberate and empower. Against traditional
theism, Cobb also denied the idea that God is
immutable (unchanging) and
impassible (unfeeling). Instead, he stresses that God is affected and changed by the actions of creatures, both human and otherwise. Cobb argues that this idea of God is more compatible with the Bible, in which
Jesus suffers and dies. Additionally, Cobb's theology argued against the idea of
salvation as a singular, binary event in which one is either saved or not saved for all time. Rather than seeing one's time in the world as a test of one's morality in order to enter a
heavenly realm, Cobb saw salvation as the continual striving to transform and perfect our experience in this world. chaired its reflection committee, and edited a number of its books. As the perceived gap between the policies of the
American government and Christian teaching grew wider, these books moved beyond simply reformist proposals. The last of these was entitled
Resistance: The New Role of Progressive Christians. In his 2010 book,
Spiritual Bankruptcy: A Prophetic Call to Action, Cobb argued against both religiousness and
secularism, claiming that what is needed is the secularization of the wisdom traditions. ==The influence of Cobb's thought in China==