Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Shorts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shorts. Show all posts

Monday, January 18, 2016

Shorts - PostChristianity & Christian Eschatology, Part 1/2






I don't speculate on the after-life all that often. But this morning a thought crossed my mind.

It is only a thought, nothing more. What if 'heaven' is where we seek forgiveness from

those we have harmed...and always receive it? - Michael Hardin, January 18, 2016


Says a religious editor to an editorial review, "...My reaction to being assigned a book on millinnial positions... RUN!!"

LOL. I can sympathize.

In both "Open and Relational Theism" and "Radical Christianity" (which is more an a/theistic philosophy than it is a theology) there is no such thing as a "tribulation or millennial outlook" because in these systems the future is either "open and unpredictable" or "of no consequence."

In the first system God does not control anything nor can there be any prophecy because God does not know the future (which is a major difference with classical theological dogmas built upon differing doctrinal emphases and philosophies).

Why?

Because its how God created the world by fiat and decree with infinite opportunity and probability. As such, the future cannot be known nor can it be controlled. But this doesn't mean the future is without redemptive design because creation is imbued with divinity as an extension of God's very Being.

A great example of this is in the design of divine evolution - though random and chaotic (as one would expect) it still always moves forward towards life as far as it can go within any unlivable or unsustainable or hostile environment.

We may think of the same thing in terms of spiritual life - that against all hell and evil a spiritual life will seek divine fellowship with both the Creator-Redeemer as well as with all creation (at least, as far as it is possible).

Given these parameters then, the only future which can be predicted is one predicated upon the Person and Being of the One who made all life/living possible.

Thus, on an evolutionarily cosmological time scale the biology of all life will come to an end as gravity propels the universe away from itself (the Big Rip). But on a spiritual dimension it will persist eternally in the God of All Creation.

R.E. Slater
January 18, 2016

References - Wikipedia - Open Theism







Shorts - PostChristianity & the Death of God, Part 2/2




I don't speculate on the after-life all that often. But this morning a thought crossed my mind.

It is only a thought, nothing more. What if 'heaven' is where we seek forgiveness from

those we have harmed...and always receive it? - Michael Hardin, January 18, 2016


Following up on an earlier post re God's immutability and impassibility (both of which are denied here as unbiblical by both "relational process theology" as well as by "open and relational theology") a postmodern, postsecular, postChristian theology will also assert the following.... That the postChristian Death of God movements must grant a more positive outcome than is typically admitted to these systems by both it opponents or proponents. Namely that the evolution of Christianity has exploded away from its delimiting forms of secularized Western modernity cemented in fatalistic pessimism, meaningless existence, and consumptive materiality to a more positive outcome. Thus allowing historical Judeo-Christianity to not only survive through these stages of itself but also thrive across all nations - and especially non-Westernized, non-Cristian nations - in actively expanding its redemptive influences into the world of men.

Theologically this would then refer to Jesus' transformative death and resurrection as one that not only dynamically "insists" across all human and cosmic structures (as versus competing with, or subsisting within, humanity's socio-economic existential structures) but persists in God's empowered missional outreach. This means that Jesus' rule and reign is now occurring with an even greater force than before His death and resurrection. So that in this view God both dies and lives as an ontic Being and as a dynamic/living redemptive force regardless of the persistence of sin and evil.

Consequently, the DOG position would leave God in the grave at the Cross while raising His re-creative force as an affective transformative residue of His past conscious Being. However, for both the "open and relational"and "relational process" theologian God not only profoundly dies but also profoundly lives in renewed redemptive transformative event/power that re-enlivens creation from its own moribund state of sin and evil (in consequence to its profound state of free will). Now creational free will is redemptively enlivened with Spirit-filled force and power which both "insists against" and not simply "subsists with" sin and evil. The redemption of God through Christ Jesus is what gives hope, purpose, and meaning to a postmodern world seeking truths beyond secular Western modernity's fatalism, consumption, and materiality.

R.E. Slater
January 18, 2016