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 Theism and Process Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theism and Process Theology. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Radical Theology & The New Materialism

Book (P)review – Religion, Politics and the Earth
by Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins
 
Posted 28 May 2013 by
 
[Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas, and Jeffrey W. Robbins, Lebanon Valley College, on their co-authored book, Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012]
 
When we were first invited to contribute to the Political Theology blog with reference to Religion, Politics and the Earth, the idea was for us to introduce the book.  But because of our extreme tardiness, it seems that opportunity has now come and gone.
 
While the book’s publication is still fairly recent by academic standards, there has already been a considerable amount of critical discussion and feedback about it.  This has happened in three primary settings.
 
The first was a public event held at Union Theological Seminary in New York on February 11, 2013 with Mark Lewis Taylor and Cornel West.  The purpose of this event was to subject our proposed new materialism to the challenge of a liberationist critique.  The entirety of this event – ‘Becoming a Brain: The New Materialism and the Challenge of Liberation’ – is accessible online here (Part One) and here (Part Two).
 
The second was a series of reviews and responses posted on the blog An und für sich.  The full length reviews posted here were by Anthony Paul Smith (in the main post) and Joshua Ramey (in this comment).  While the public event at Union raised the question of the connection between the new materialism and liberation theology, Smith and Ramey, each in their own way, raised questions about the vestigial supercessionist Christian overtones to our work.
 
The third was a coordinated blog tour organized by Tripp Fuller at Homebrewed Christianity.  The scope of the reviews and responses from the blog tour is too broad for us to respond to in full here, but the two lines of thought we found most felicitous as we continue to think through the ramifications of the new materialism are its connections with transformance art and with process theology.
 
So rather than re-introduce the book, we’d like to take this occasion to comment on the excitement we have felt by these various critical engagements.  After all, this collaborative, manifesto-styled book was written to generate new thoughts, inquiries and connections, to open up conversations.  Taking the evidence above, it has already achieved that goal beyond our wildest imaginations:
 
The New Materialism and the Challenge of Liberation
 
This event at Union Theological, planned by Bo Eberle and George Schmidt, was the result of an overzealous footnote and a well-timed question. The footnote – first penned by Robbins and then later cited by Crockett, and reflective of both of our respective political theologies – makes the case for the urgent need for a truly radical political theology, and along the way criticizes too quickly and superficially the traditions of both liberationist and process thought.  The question, posed by Schmidt to Crockett and Robbins at a session at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, was why we found it necessary to distance ourselves from liberation theology when to his mind there was more resonance and overlap than not.  We agreed then that our dismissive attitude was premature and unwarranted, and that the points of connection and convergence needed to be explored further – hence the invitation to Mark Lewis Taylor and Cornel West to interrogate and challenge our work from a liberationist perspective.
 
While Taylor rightly pointed out the need for us to give fuller attention to, and schematize, social antagonisms as an integral part of our radical political theology, West took the occasion to identify our new materialism as a new species of liberation theology, one that emerges from our starting point of the earth as subject.  This new species of liberation theology would be an alternative to those operating within a politics of identity.  Because we intend to continue this collaboration, we are eager to address the concerns raised by Taylor and follow through in explicating the ways in which the new materialism might contribute to a contemporary liberation theology.
 
Supercessionist Christianity
 
Smith identifies our book as a ‘synthetic manifesto,’ and admits to a certain excitement in our attempt to think things such as social media, art, religion and politics together with energy and ontology.  His hesitancy, however, comes from the book’s Hegelian – and thus, death-of-God Christian – overtones.  He points out that our discussion of religion only ever refers to Christianity, and that this privileging is symptomatic of an unspoken Christian triumphalism at work. This vein of inquiry is opened up even more by Ramey when his extended riff on our book includes the evocation of Norman O. Brown’s query on ‘The Challenge of Islam,’ the hermaphroditic Christ of Bruno, the gendered and engendering earth of Catherine Keller and Cleo Kearns, the divine eroticism of Karmen MacKendrick, etc.
 
We wish to affirm without qualification these deeply heterodoxical readings of religion, politics and the earth.  This is precisely the radical theology we are hoping to engender, even as the book itself is necessarily limited.
 
At the same time, we’d also want to push back a bit on the suggestion that merely by situating our work within a primarily (but not exclusively) Christian discourse, our work necessarily is guilty of a religious triumphalism.  Just as we sought to differentiate between two different concepts of the political – the politics of the state-form vs. the politics of the people – so too do we think it is possible to differentiate between kinds of Christianity, and that a meaningful and potent form of resistance might just as likely come from within as an immanent critique than from without. This is also the project and promise of John D. Caputo’s theology, culminating in his forthcoming The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps. And our follow-up collaborative project to this work on the new materialism will be even more explicitly an insurrectionary theology.
 
On Transformance Art and Process Theology
 
For us, the Homebrewed Christianity blog tour on our book was an absolute revelation.  To have our book be the subject of such diverse and creative reflections was both gratifying and challenging.  Bo Eberle (here, here and here) and Tad DeLay (here and here) did incredible work summarizing and interrogating the radical energy proposal developed by Kevin Mequet, which was incorporated as a centerpiece of our re-conception of materialism as an ontology of energy transformation.
 
Nearly all of the bloggers picked up on our central argument with regard to digital culture and social media as a material form of biopolitics by which corporate capitalism becomes further entrenched and more real.  When we realize that the virtual is material we see how the sovereign rule of global capital is nearly infinite in its scope, from its dominion over the earth to the commodification of our most innermost, private selves.
 
From Rick Quinn, we learn how Elton John might be seen as a radical theologian (here and here).
 
And to Todd Littleton, we owe a profound debt for how successfully he demonstrates the practicality of our new materialism (specifically for an evangelical audience).  He is correct that the main theological import of what we are claiming as the new materialism is the doubling back and doubling down on the old materialist charge to change the world.  And one way to accomplish this would be for churches and pastors and believers to get beyond or over their soteriological obsessions.  Religion is about so much more than salvation.  One does not have to be a materialist to accept this point, but materialism – old and new alike – makes this its bedrock theological claim. Adam Moore certainly gets this point as well when he shows how our work on Art might contribute to new understandings and practices of liturgy and worship as ‘transformance art’.
 
And finally, from Austin Roberts, just as Cornel West claimed our work as a new species of liberation theology, so too does Roberts demonstrate the important connections between this new materialism and process theology.  The connections to John Cobb are real, and help us to further walk back our earlier dismissals of both liberation theology and process theology.
 
Thanks to these generous and insightful interlocutors, we are now in a position to remake the case for a radical political theology.  The issue is not, as we previously claimed, that there is no radical political theology.  But instead, there are many.  Our book, in spite of its blind spots and limitations, seems to have provided an unlikely – or at least heretofore overlooked – convergence between radical, liberationist, and process theologies.
 
Speaking for ourselves, we are certainly energized by the prospects.
 
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
 
Book Description
October 30, 2012 Radical Theologies
This book takes its leave with the realization that Western-driven culture is quickly reaching the limits of global capitalism, and that this reality manifests itself not only economically and politically, but that it is at once a cultural, aesthetic, political, religious, ecological, and philosophical problem.  While Western capitalism is based upon the assumption of indefinite growth, we have run up against real, physical constraints to growth, and humanity must face the real, physical ramifications of the short-sighted and ultimately counter-productive choices made on behalf of the capitalist machine.  While there is widespread angst and numerous scenarios of apocalyptic crisis and collapse, there is little or no comprehension of the problem and a coherent picture of reality is left wanting.  
Drawing primarily from the discourses of contemporary continental philosophy, cultural theory, and radical theology, the new materialism is being offered up as a redress to this problem by its effort to make sense of the world as an integrated whole.The book emphasizes three aspects of the current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often viewed primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of the ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the de-leveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is inter-related, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing. 
Rather than despair or the cynicism that passes for realpolitik, the authors will suggest that this crisis provides an opening for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth. This opening is an opening onto a new materialism that is neither a crude consumerist materialism nor a reductive atomic materialism, but a materialism that takes seriously the material and physical world in which we live. This materialism counters idealism in its practical and philosophical forms, which constructs an ideal world that we wish to inhabit and then mistakes that world for the real one. Furthermore, in contrast to classical materialism which rejects religion as a form of false consciousness, this new materialism recognizes religion as an effective means of political mobilization and as a genuine source of piety, and thus does not oppose religion per se; instead, it opposes fanaticism and fundamentalism, including the fairy-tale expectations that a God or gods will rescue us from our predicament and punish the evil-doers while rewarding the righteous.

 
 

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 206 pages
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (October 30, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1137268921
  • ISBN-13: 978-1137268921
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
A Synthetic Manifesto: A Review
 
December 20, 2012
 
An academic acquaintance wrote this and it represents my view of this book:
 
 
A Synthetic Manifesto: A Review of Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism
Thursday, December 20, 2012 -- Anthony Paul Smith
Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins are no strangers to readers of this blog. Both are well established figures within the fields of theology, philosophy and the liminal space between them that sometimes goes by the name secular theology and sometimes Continental philosophy of religion. Both are graduates of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University and Crockett now teaches as an associate professor of Religion at the University of Central Arkansas while Robbins is a professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College. While their friendship has long been know, expressed in the academic realm through their co-editorship of the Insurrections series with ColumbiaUP, Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism is their first co-written book. The book, published in the new Radical Theologies series published by Palgrave Macmillan, is quite consciously written as a kind of manifesto for the practice and future of radical theology. Now, what this means is dependent of course on the figures who develop it, but by radical theology it is clear that people thinking with religious material outside of a confessional duty as well as those who are more explicitly confessional but still attempting to radicalize their confessional thought beyond any capture by that tradition's authorities. That is, radical theology cuts a wide-swath and it may be the only form of theology that is truly "big tent" in terms of its actions and not just as a propaganda move. However much such a movement might benefit from a manifesto, the disparate directions and materials with which various radical theologians engage with makes creating such a manifesto difficult and risks sedimenting their works and cutting off these radical theologians from the true, creative source of their power. At times it feels that Crockett and Robbins risk such sedimentation. However, what ultimately saves them from this temptation is their very synthetic approach. This is a book constructed not in the name of Crockett and Robbins, but through a multiplicity of names that are brought together in varying ways and with various levels of success under the standard "The New Materialism".
 
Crockett and Robbins write the book under the sign of a disaster. The disaster of our contemporary age whose name is in some sense Legion, but whose true name is Capitalism. This fundamental insight, drawn from Philip Goodchild amongst others, is put this way by the authors:
 
The problem is fundamental: Western capitalism is based upon assumptions of indefinite if not infinite growth, but the natural resources of the planet are finite. We are running up against real, physical constraints to growth, and the capitalist machine is desperately searching for more resources to fuel ever-shorter periods of apparent productivity or profitability, like a junkie shooting up more often with higher concentrations to get that same hight that is diminishing with each hit. [...] We will briefly lay out three aspects of our current crisis: the ecological crisis, which is often view primarily in terms of global warming; the energy crisis, which involves peak oil and the limits of our ability to extract and exploit the cheap energy of fossil fuels; and finally the financial crisis, which involves the deleveraging and destruction of massive amounts of money and credit. Each of these problems is interrelated, because money is dependent upon energy, and energy is a product of natural physical resources that are finite and diminishing. Rather than give in to despair, or idealistic wishful thinking, we suggest that this crisis could provide an oepning for a new kind of orientation to thinking and acting, a new way of being in and of the earth (my emphasis).
 
As this long quote shows, it is the disaster that conditions in some way the thought but, hopefully, does not determine it. The crisis is a call to think and to be in ways that are more creative and more interesting than the failed forms of thought and practice that are determined and reign under the capitalist crisis.
 
The authors then take us on a comprehensive tour through a number of very important loci for contemporary radical theology ranging from digital culture, religion, politics, art, ethics, energy, onto-neurology, logic, and the Event. Each of these loci are privileged as a central node for any contemporary form of thought that would respond to the crisis outlined above. Each is analyzed through Crockett and Robbins's understanding of the Hegelian dialectic where, in their reading, thought returns to itself as, in this case, the earth. What they aim to do with this conception of dialectics is bring together a number of disparate thinkers, to reconcile figures that normally wouldn't be thought to be reconcilable, namely a number of new Hegelian thinkers (Zizek, Malabou, and Badiou) with the work of Spinozist thinkers like (Deleuze and Negri). The synthetic aspect of each chapter is on display as the authors move from one thinker to the next, linking them as if they were simply amino acids to construct a DNA code that organizes a larger body of thought.
 
In many ways the authors are not the authors in the normal sense, setting aside that some of the chapter are co-written with a third (Michael W. Wilson assisted with chapter on art and Kevin Mequet co-wrote the two chapters on energy). Instead of a stable author there is a proliferation of names, different lines of thought taken and extended by some antagonistic name. A line from Zizek completed by connecting it to a line of Deleuze. In many ways the claims of the book will certainly be familiar to its readers. What is new is the synthetic form it takes here and ultimately its readers will need to decide if such a synthesis is possible, or if one of these figures or terms will overdetermine the rest, for the manifesto style of the book precludes the authors doing that themselves.
 
For my part, I found the book exciting for all the reasons stated above, but I remain suspicious of a certain Hegelian, and so Christian, overdetermination of this kind of radical theology proposed. One of the fundamental claims of the book is that the current crisis requires new alliances between the sciences, humanities, political movements, and religion. I, of course, agree with them on this point. However, the challenge is to make this a truly new alliance. For example, while some attention is given to ecology, it is only in the mode of disaster ecology or a discussion of global climate change. Ecology as such is absent from the chapter detailing a proposal for a new kind of paradigm for thinking about energy. I am unable to evaluate the validity of the claims made in this chapter, relating to conceiving of energy without heat, and I suspect that the authors wrote this with a bit of fear and trembling. But what did struck me is that, even if the proposal to look into the electromagnetism of the Earth as a potential for energy production holds up scientifically within physics, there would still require an ecological element that is missing. Ecology teaches us not that everything is connected, that's quite simply obvious when one just thinks about causation, but ecology is the science of those relations, showing where some links are more intense while others are not. All of this translates into material questions about the effects of some new human technology upon the wider human and non-human biosphere. Since much of this discussion of energy is predicated upon a kind of Hegelian vision, I can't help but wonder if the issue of reconciliation, ecological theodicy, is not laying underneath this proposal.
 
There is also the issue of the way religion, and thus materialism, is conceived within the book. The authors only ever reference Christianity and seem to privilege the Hegelian version of the death of God outlined in Zizek over other forms of religion. This is in some ways a result of the genre of the book. As a synthetic manifesto it will only really be able to respond to how things truly are within the fields it builds on and announces. And much of the new materialism, whether it be secular philosophers like Badiou or a philosopher playing a theologian which we sometimes find in Zizek, is predicated upon an unspoken supremacy of Christianity as the only religion that actually ends in the secular, that ends in a kind of productive atheism (against the New Athiest style atheism). For any truly radical rethinking of politics an engagement outside of the Christian form is called for. One where the notion of Event may too be suspect.
 
Yet, these criticisms aside, Crockett and Robbins have done us a great service by bringing together a number of exciting but disparate lines of research in their synthetic manifesto. It may help younger intellectuals develop and go forward in a genuinely new way that may yet just respond, at least within thought, to the contemporary crisis.
 
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
 
 
 
 
Religion, Politics & the Earth
all over the Theo-Blogs!
 
April 23, 2013
Tad DeLay is blogging on the politics of energy.  Here it is… BAM!

Joe Carson has some questions for the assumptions of radical theology & will blog on energy later in the week.

Matt Ritchie, lawyer and theologian, has been blogging on the book.  Is God Dead?, What is the New Materialism?, & the Logic of the New Materialism & the Courts.

Jonathon Snyder will be blogging on digital culture.

Maria Drews shall be sharing her wisdom about the book.

Rick Quinn gave an Elton John inspired taster & drops some more goodness this week.

Scott Cowan will bring the blogger excitement to the political theology blog.

Adam Moore shall be blogging on the Art chapter this thursday.

My favorite Southern Baptist, Todd Littleton, shall bring the #awesomesauce on friday.

David Adams discusses the book in less than 1k words!

Austin Roberts drops some Cobb & gives a great Process inspired reply.

Pastor Darren examines the understanding of religion in the book from one who rocks the pulpit.


 

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What We Mean and Don't Mean When We Talk About God's Sovereignty

A Non-Calvinist, Relational View of God’s Sovereignty
 
by Roger Olson
April 14, 2013
 
As I gave this talk at this week’s Missio Alliance gathering in Alexandria, Virginia. For those who are watching me carefully (from the Arminian camp) I must say I make no claim for this being “the” Arminian view. It is simply my view and I’m an Arminian. 
 
Comment
This subject has been long overdue and short on recognition until
now. Many thanks to Roger Olson for this post. Additionally, I will
post mine own comments as necessary through the body of this article.
- R.E. Slater (res)
 
 
My office phone rang and I answered it. A stern voice said “Is this Roger Olson?” who which I confessed. The man introduced himself as pastor of Baptist church in the state, implying that he was a constituent of the seminary where I teach. Anyway, I got the message. “I hear you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty,” he declared. I responded “Oh, really? What do you mean by ‘God’s sovereignty’?” He said “You, know. God is in control of everything.” I decided to play with him a little. “Oh, so you believe God caused the holocaust and every other evil event in human history? That God is the author of sin and evil?” There was a long pause. Then he said “Well, no.” “Then do you believe in God’s sovereignty?” I asked. He mumbled something about just wanting to “make sure” and hung up.
 
My experience, based on teaching Christian theology in churches and three Christian universities over thirty-one years, is that many, perhaps most, Christians don’t know what they mean when they talk about “God’s sovereignty”—beyond “God is in control.” My concern has been to help Christians think reflectively about God’s sovereignty and arrive at beliefs about it that are biblically sound and intelligible.
 
My own view of God’s sovereignty is what I call “relational.” I believe in God’s “relational sovereignty.” What I want to do here, today, is explain what I mean by that and invite you to consider it as an alternative to the view of God’s sovereignty currently enjoying great popularity—the Augustinian-Calvinist view that I call, for lack of any more descriptive term, “divine determinism.” It could rightly be called “non-relational sovereignty.” Thousands of Christian young people are adopting it, often without critically reflecting on what it implies and without knowing any alternatives to it.
 
I identify with a different movement in contemporary theology called “Relational Theology” or “Relational Theism.” There’s no single “guru” of the movement and it’s not nearly as popular or easy to identify and describe. But it also has biblical roots and historical precedents.
 
In 2012 thirty theologians, nearly all self-identified evangelicals, wrote chapters in a book entitled Relational Theology: A Contemporary Introduction edited by Brint Montgomery, Thomas Jay Oord, and Karen Winslow. It was published by Point Loma Press, an imprint of Wipf and Stock publishers. The volume covers many issues of Christian theology and practice from a “relational point of view.”
 
It’s an excellent little book and I can recommend it highly as an introduction to contemporary Relational Theology—especially that segment of it that is evangelical. Most of the authors, maybe all of them, are Wesleyans in the evangelical tradition (or evangelicals in the Wesleyan tradition). However, one weakness I find in the book is the lack of a chapter on God’s sovereignty from a relational perspective. That is a gap I hope to fill here.
 
Everyone familiar with current religious movements knows about the “Young, Restless, Reformed” movement led by John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Louie Giglio (among others). Some call its theology “neo-Calvinism.” It’s actually a contemporary form of the theology of Jonathan Edwards, John Piper’s favorite theologian. Anyone who has studied Edwards or Piper knows they have a distinctive view of God’s sovereignty. It’s enjoying great popularity, especially among twenty-something Christians. According to it, whatever happens is planned, ordained and governed by God. Another way of saying that is that God foreordains and renders certain everything that happens without exception. As John Piper has said, according to his view, if a dirty bomb were to land in downtown Minneapolis, that would be from God.
 
Many people simply believe this view is what is meant by “God’s sovereignty” and anything else is a denial of God’s sovereignty. If God is not the all-determining reality, then he is not sovereign. Or, as Reformed theologian R. C. Sproul likes to say, if there is one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God. Or, as British Calvinist Paul Helm says, not only every atom and molecule but also every thought and intention is under the control of God.
 
My purpose today is not to expound this wildly popular view of God’s sovereignty or spend a lot of time critiquing it. I will do both briefly. My purpose is to expound and defend an alternative perspective on God’s sovereignty that I believe is more appealing—biblically, rationally and experientially. And it has historical appeal as well, even if it has been throughout much of Christian history a “minority report,” so to speak.
 
At risk of over simplifying, I will argue that there are three main views of God’s sovereignty in Christian theology. That is to say, in spite of many variations, all views tend to “come home” to one of these. Think of them as large tents under which people with different interpretations of them gather, talk, and debate. They are divine determinism, relational theism, and mediating views. The third, “mediating views,” have much in common with each other and so represent a single over-arching view even if they emphasize singular points differently.


Divine Determinism
 
I begin with divine determinism which I actually began describing above. According to all versions of it, all events are traceable back to God who controls history down to every detail according to a blueprint. God has never taken a risk. God micromanages history and individuals’ lives. Nothing surprises God. Nothing can happen that is contrary to God’s will.
 
Now, of course, there are many versions of divine determinism. Hardly any advocate of that view likes my label for it. Sproul, for example, adamantly rejects “determinism” as a descriptor of his view. However, a quick look at any major English dictionary will reveal why it’s a fair descriptor. By whatever means, even if through “secondary causes,” God determines what will happen and that determination is as Helm says “fine grained.” Nothing at all escapes it.
 
Some proponents of divine determinism make use of something called “middle knowledge” to attempt to reconcile it with free will. Others reject that tactic. Some attempt to define free will compatibilistically, that is as simply doing what you want to do even if you could not do otherwise. Others reject free will altogether. Some admit that this view makes God the author of sin and evil; others adamantly reject that, appealing to God’s permission rather than authorship of sin and evil. However, when pressed, they say that God’s permission of sin and evil is “effectual permission.” In any case, God still plans and renders them certain.


Relational Theism
 
The second view of God’s sovereignty, the one I plan to expound here, is relational theism. Oord, one of the editors and authors of Relational Theology, defines it this way: “At its core, relational theology affirms two key ideas: 1. God affects creatures in various ways. Instead of being aloof and detached, God is active and involved in relationship with others. God relates to us, and that makes an essential difference. 2. Creatures affect God in various ways. While God’s nature is unchanging, creatures influence the loving and living Creator of the universe. We relate to God, and creation makes a difference to God.” (p. 2) Another author, Barry Callen, says of relational theism (or theology) that it focuses on “the interactivity or mutuality of the God-human relationship. God is understood to be truly personal, loving, and not manipulative. The interaction of the wills of Creator and creature are real.” (p. 7)
 
Relational theism or [relational] theology comes in many varieties, some of them quite incompatible at points. All share in common, however, belief that creatures can and do actually affect God. The relationship between creatures, especially human persons, and God is two-way. God is, as Dutch theologian Hendrikus Berkhof said, the “defenseless superior power” within a genuine covenant relationship with us whose immutability is not impervious to influence but “changeable faithfulness.” According to relational theism, the God-human relationship is reciprocal, mutual, interactive. God is not Aristotle’s “Thought thinking Itself” or Aquinas’ “Pure Actuality” without potentiality. Rather, God is Pinnock’s “Most Moved Mover”—the superior power who allows creatures to resist him and becomes vulnerable and open to harm as well as joy
 
One of the best descriptions of relational theism, I believe, is found in Thomas Torrance’s little book Space, Time, and Incarnation:
 
The world…is made open to God through its intersection in the axis of Creation-Incarnation. … But what of the same relationship the other way round, in the openness of God for the world that He has made? Does the intersection of His reality with our this-worldly reality in Jesus Christ mean anything for God? We have noted already that it means that space and time are affirmed as real for God in the actuality of His relations with us, which binds us to space and time, so that neither we nor God can contract out of them. Does this not mean that God has so opened Himself to our world that our this-worldly experiences have import for Him in such a way, for example, that we must think of Him as taking our hurt and pain into Himself? (p. 74)
 
In sum, then, relational theology or theism is any view that imports the creation into the life of God so that God is in some way dependent on it for the whole or part of his experience [for which he designed and planned at the beginning of creation in order to establish living, willful, relationships with himself. Perhaps the word "dependent" is a bit harsh in view of God's all-glorious sovereignty, however, it is a very good, and necessary word to us, because it informs us that God is in a very real, two-way, living relationship with us. A relationship that calls forth the older, classical term of the "divine-human" cooperative. But rather than calling ourselves into a "cooperative" with the divine, God says "I love you," and because of this divine love, I wish to be in holy communion with you, where we each depend upon the other, according to the limiting sense of our being in relationship to his own.Where the infinite, all powerful One desires to limit himself in accordance to our own creative limitations bounded by sin and a corruptible free will. Where through Jesus the Creator becomes the Incarnated Creator, experiencing with us our own limitations, corruptibility, and life in general. Whose passion runs towards us even as our own passion runs to meet him, and holy fellowship, eternal and soaring, meet in lockstep with one another. This is what is meant by a dependent relationship. A relationship where each depends upon the other's love - both God and man. To one another's joy and boundless, living relationship. - res]....
 
... The implications of this for a view of God’s sovereignty are enormous and takes it away from divine determinism. As I will be spending the second half of this talk exploring this view of sovereignty I’ll settle now for what I have said about relational theism in general.


Mediating Sovereignty
 
The third main Christian view of God’s sovereignty is what I call, for lack of a better term, mediating. These are views that attempt to combine, usually with some appeal to paradox, divine determinism with relational theism. An excellent example is the late evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch. Throughout his career Bloesch boldly expressed and defended the paradoxical nature of Christianity following Kierkegaard and Barth. In his book The Evangelical Renaissance he declared that:
 
God knows the course of the future and the fulfillment of the future... (I prefer to think of God as actively bringing the future to fruition, so that he has an idea how this will occur - i.e., through his own sacrifice - but that the how, when and where of it is open to change and fulfillment. This then keeps to an Open definition of theology and not its more classical component of austere direction and non-relational force. - res)..., but this must not be taken to mean that He literally knows every single event even before it happens. It means that He knows every alternative and the way in which His children may well respond to the decisions that confront them. The plan of God is predetermined, but the way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the free cooperation of His subjects. This does not detract from His omnipotence, for it means that He is so powerful that He is willing to attain His objectives by allowing a certain room for freedom of action on the part of man. (p. 53)
 
This may sound relational or deterministic and Bloesch reveled in that ambiguity. “The plan of God is predetermined” is deterministic; “The way in which He realizes it is dependent partly on the…cooperation of His subjects” is relational.
 
I think that many theologians and non-theologically trained Christians alike tend to embrace a kind of ambiguous, paradoxical view of God’s sovereignty. I often hear the same person say “Oh, well, God knows what he’s doing” and “People have free will, you know” in different circumstances—the former to comfort in grief and the latter to get God off the hook when evil raises its ugly head.
 
Relational theology or theism lends itself to a particular view of God’s sovereignty that is neither deterministic nor paradoxical. Divine determinism of any type cannot explain how God is good in any meaningful sense or how people are responsible for the evil they do. Mediating theology, theologies of paradox, cannot explain the consistency of God’s comprehensive, meticulous providence with genuine free will and prayer playing a role in the outworking of God’s plan. Relational sovereignty, which is what I will call the view of God’s sovereignty derived from relational theism, seeks and finds consistency and flexibility.
 
*I will further add the important, necessary component of Open theology as I had mentioned immediately above... "open theology" simply means that nothing is known for sure, and that the future is as open with God as it is with ourselves. However, what is known by God is his plan of redemption. A redemption that will be large enough, and flexible enough, to reform, renew, reclaim, revitalize, reform, and resurrect this old world back to its original design of uncorrupted communion with Himself.
 
And yet, God's plan of redemption does not lessen his relationship with us, as free willed beings, but enhances it, giving to it its living, unknown quality of formation. In itself, it was a plan as much known to Himself as was his plan of creation that included indeterminacy in its creative fabric, and human free will in its sentient aspect. Each aspect was accounted for, and planned for, including the corruption of sin that would surely come at the moment of its initialization. In effect, God knew that to create would, at the last, involve himself in his own creation through personal sacrifice and redemption (the "heart ache" side of it as expressed in relational terms, sic the book of Hosea).
 
Hence, by coupling relational theology with open theology (e.g., "the future is more open than it is known," in a sense) the paradoxical nature that Dr. Olson refers to can be appropriately removed. We live in an Open relationship and an Open future... just as real as any relationships we have in our own lives with loved ones, living organizations, ministries, and evolving friendships. At the same time, these concepts remove the more classical definition of unmoved, austere, sovereignty that bears with it a closed future already preknown and laid out deterministically without necessity of our intimate involvement. And because we have open relationships and open futures than our bible and our faith becomes open and evolving as well, requiring our necessary apprehension and interaction to each.
 
Finally, for more discussion on these subject matters, please refer to the sidebars along the right side of this web journal under "An Emerging Theology," "An Open Faith and Open Theology," and the several categories found under "Theism."
 
- res
 
 
 
[sidebars] Categories of Theism - Intro, Definitions, Open, Process, Relational
 
 
 
The Matter of Process Theology
 
... What I want to outline for you and recommend to you is a non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty. It is not rooted in process theology which, while relational, detracts too much from God’s transcendence. Process theology is one form of relational theology, but not all relational theology is process. Process theology denies God’s omnipotence which is its main failing. From that flow other flaws such as its denial of any eschatological resolution to the struggles of history and eventual end to evil and innocent suffering. Process theology, in my opinion, sacrifices too much of the biblical portrait of God and, in the process, robs us of hope for the world. It is right in much of what it affirms but wrong in much of what it denies. It rightly affirms God’s vulnerability and the partial openness of the future; it wrongly denies God’s power to intervene in human affairs to rescue, heal and defeat evil.
 
*One may think of process theology as the extreme to Calvinistic doctrine, where relational/open theology would lie in the middle between both positions. For myself, the term "process" I like a lot... it gives to the Christian the idea of God's resident movement through time and history... but like Dr. Olson, I have mine own reservations of it. However, it was because of process theology that I became cognizant to the idea of relational theology. Apparently, there was a debate whether process theology should be known as "relational-process theology" back in the early days of its formation - and when discovering that aspect of it, I immediately grabbed hold of the revolutionizing idea of "relational theology" and began to develop it. Months later, I happily came to discover additional advocates of this same position (a point you will discover when reading of my journey through my past documents here on this site).
 
Overall, I find great sympathy towards Process Theology, but at the same time have found that it re-engineers a lot of past Christian orthodoxy - which is not necessarily a bad thing to do - but just how it is done and towards what ends it intends (similar to Dr. Olson's comment above). Along with process theology has come the many helpful ideas found in Emergent and Postmodern thought as well. Certainly foreign to classical thought, however, nonetheless relevant and important to discuss in our understanding of who God is, what he is doing through Christ, and what the mission of the church is and should be.
 
Especially so if the church is to continue to bear a contemporary, relevant gospel to the world.... Where old-line classicism must be updated and not left unscrutinized to a more historically mature and educated world. Hence, it is the task of today's theologian to do just that in today's global, industrialized, technological societies. Consequently, it is my intention to continue to sift through process theology to discover biblical fundamentals that may be kept, while disregarding any unnecessary corollaries, assumptions, or surmises, that are non-central to its overall structure (a syncretisim if you will to Christian orthodoxy). And with the overall mindset of creating a more relevant Christian theology giving to us a better understanding of our living faith and hope in Jesus our Lord and Savior.
 
- res
 
ps - "Narrative Theology" has also arise as one of those undated ideas to undertanding God and our faith as Dr. Olson goes on to explain.... More can be found on this under the sidebar "Hermeneutics as a Meta-Narrative."


The Matter of Narrative Theology

... No doubt some critics will regard my own non-process, narrative-based, relational view of God’s sovereignty as an unstable middle ground between divine determinism and process theology. I hope to show that it is not unstable or incoherent and preserves the best of both of those alternative perspectives while avoiding their fatal flaws.
 
Rather than focusing on proof texts of Scripture or philosophies, this relational view of God’s sovereignty arises out of and is justified by a synoptic, canonical, holistic vision of God drawn from the biblical narrative. Obviously I do not have time now even to summarize “narrative theology,” but I will mention a few of its major points.
 
Narrative theology regards stories and symbols as vehicles of truth. The Bible contains propositions, but it is not primarily a book of propositions. It is primarily a book of stories and symbols from which propositions can be drawn. The Bible is the story of one great “theodrama.” Its purpose is to identify God for us and transform us. Transformation is its first and highest purpose though it does also contain information.
 
Narrative theology refuses to treat the Bible as a “not-yet-systematized systematic theology” which is how I believe too much conservative evangelical theology treats it. No system can replace the Bible which always has new light to reveal and more truth into which to guide us.
 
Narrative theology resists too much philosophical speculation into matters beyond our possible experience and beyond the biblical narrative which is not about God-in-himself but about God-with-us. Narrative theology resists metaphysical compliments paid to God that cannot rest on the portrayal of God in his own story.
 
Finally, narrative theology insists on taking the whole biblical story into account when theology attempts to derive truth about God.
 
A relational view of God’s sovereignty begins not with philosophical a prioris such as “God is by definition the being greater than which none can be conceived” or “If there’s one maverick molecule in the universe, God is not God” but with God as the personal, loving, self-involving, passionate, relational Yahweh of Israel and Father of Jesus Christ.
 
This God is not aloof or self-sufficient in himself or impassible. His deity, as Barth taught us, is no prison. And as Jürgen Moltmann has taught us, his death on the cross is not a contradiction of his deity but the most profound revelation of it. And that because this God is Love.
 
Does this all mean that God needs us? Not at all. This God could have lived forever satisfied with the communal love shared between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but he chose to become vulnerable in relation to the world he created out of the overflowing of that love. Is that just a metaphysical compliment unnecessarily paid to God or a truth necessary to the biblical story of God with us? I would argue it is the latter. A God who literally needs the world is a pathetic God hardly worthy of worship.
 
The key insight for a non-process relational view of God’s sovereignty is that God is sovereign over his sovereignty. The missio dei is God’s choice to involve himself intimately with the world so as to be affected by it. That choice is rooted in God’s love and desire for reciprocal love freely offered by his human creatures. None of this detracts in any way from God’s sovereignty because God is sovereign over his sovereignty. To say that God can’t be vulnerable, can’t limit himself, can’t restrain his power to make room for other powers, is, ironically, to deny God’s sovereignty.
 
Allow me to use the words of Torrance again to express this view of God and God’s sovereignty. Contrary to classical theism,
 
If God is merely impassible He has not made room for Himself in our agonied existence, and if He is merely immutable He has neither place nor time for frail evanescent creatures in His unchanging existence. But the God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as sharing our lot is the God who is really free to make Himself poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich, the God invariant in love but not impassible, constant in faithfulness but not immutable. (p. 75)
 
There is a doctrine of God’s sovereignty subtly included in those phrases about God’s vulnerability. Torrance’s vulnerable God cannot be the all-determining reality of classical theism and Calvinism. Such a God has not really made room for us in his existence, his life, whatever certain neo-Calvinists might say. Rather, the God of Torrance and relational theism is the God who makes himself partially dependent on his human partners so that our history becomes his, too.


Conclusion of the Matter

What does that mean, then, for God’s sovereignty? First, the relational God of the biblical story is not, to quote Baptist theologian E. Frank Tupper, a “do anything, anytime, anywhere kind of God.” (A Scandalous Providence, p. 335 ) Second, however, the relational God of the biblical story is a powerful God who lures, persuades, cajoles and occasionally overrides the wills of people. He is the “superior defenseless power” in the covenant relationship he has established with us.
 
I argue that such a view of God’s sovereignty, one that sees God as truly relational with us, that views us as genuine partners with and sometimes against God, can support and give impetus to commitment to participation in the mission of God. The picture of God as invulnerable, static, unmoved, all-determining derived from much traditional Reformed theology, for example, undermines participation in the mission of God towards God’s kingdom because it makes our participation with God superfluous. We are then seen as pawns rather than knights.
 
Am I, then, advocating so-called “open theism?” Not necessarily, although I think that’s far superior to classical theism in many ways. Relational theism and its attendant view of God’s sovereignty are larger than just open theism which is one form of relational theism. The view I have outlined here goes back at least to German mediating theologian I. A. Dorner in the middle of the 19th century who helped Protestant theology complete the Reformation by reconstructing the doctrine of God inherited and left virtually untouched by the Reformers. According to Dorner, God is historical with us and we are created co-creators of history with God. Listen to Dorner after he has expressed his view of God’s ethical immutability in which he changes in relation to creatures, not in his nature but in his “thoughts and his will”:
 
To be sure, God does not hand over the reins of government to the faithful; but neither does he want to make them automatons [robots], beings resigned to a determined will. From the very beginning, he has preferred to give his friends a joint knowledge of what he wills to do…and to deal historico-temporally through them as his instruments, which as personalities may co-determine his will and counsel. (Quoted in Claude Welch, God and Incarnation, p. 116)
 
This is, so far as I have discovered, the best brief theological expression of a truly relational view of God’s sovereignty that I have found in Christian thought. The only correction I would offer is to the use of the word “instruments” for created personalities that “co-determine” God’s will and counsel. To contemporary ears, anyway, “instruments” sounds like “pawns” which is clearly not what Dorner intended.
 
Finally, in sum, then, a relational view of God’s sovereignty is one that regards God’s will as settled in terms of the intentions of his character but open and flexible in terms of the ways in which he acts because he allows himself to be acted upon. Only such a view of God’s sovereignty does justice to the whole of the biblical drama, to God as personal, to human persons as responsible actors and potential partners with God in God’s mission.