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

Monday, January 14, 2013

Another Calvinist Misrepresentation of Arminianism

Index - Postmodernism



Index to Postmodernism
( this section is intended to link to "An Emerging Theology" )



POSTMODERNISM  V.  MODERNISM
Peter L. Berger - Pluralism and the Future of Christianity

The Oracles of Postmodern Theology Must Reinterpret Scripture...

Part 2 - How Modernity's Secularism Changed the World: Charles Taylor, "A Secular Age"

Part 1 - How Modernity's Secularism Changed the World: An Introduction to Postmodern Hermeneutics

The Ontological Univocity of God's Being from a Postmodern Perspective

How the Reformational Church Brought Secularism to Society

Cometh the End of Days in Postmodernism's Deconstructive Light

A Response to Dr. Geisler's Interpretive Reaction to Emergent Postmodernism

What Emergent Christianity Can Offer a Secularized World

What does it mean to be a Postmodern Christian?

Postmodernism and Its Critics

Reviewing Thomas Oord's "Revisionary Postmodernism and the Christian Faith"



POSTMODERNISM - RETHINKING CHURCH AND THEOLOGY
Index - Postmodernism: Rethinking Church and Theology



POSTMODERN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Charles Jencks - An Architect's View of Postmodernism



POSTMODERNISM'S BIRTH
"The Day America Died" and the Birth of Postmodernism



POSTMODERNISM AND RADICAL ORTHODOXY
Book Review: "Whose Afraid of Postmodernism?" by James Smith

Kevin Corcoran's Critique of Derrida and Caputo



POSTMODERNISM AND RADICAL THEOLOGY
Luke 7: A Gospel of Reversals - "Who Are the Invited? And Who Are the Sinners?"

Phase III - Building a Postmodern Theology that is both Weak and Apocalyptic

Catching Up with Radical Theology

John Caputo: Towards a Radical Theology, Not a Radical Atheism: A Review of Modern Atheism, Atheology and Divine Inexistence



REVISIONARY POSTMODERNISM
Phase III - Building a Postmodern Theology that is both Weak and Apocalyptic

Thomas Oord: Revisionary Postmodernism and the Christian Faith



POSTMODERN BOOK REVIEWS
Book Review: "Incarnational Humanism" by Jens Zimmermann

Book Review: "Whose Afraid of Postmodernism?" by James Smith

Book Review: Graham Ward's Becoming Postmaterial Citizens

Book Review: Merold Westphal's Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church

Book Review: Carl Raschke's GloboChrist

Editorial Reviews: "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" by John Caputo

Book Review: "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" by John Caputo



Index - An Emerging Theology



Index to An Emerging Theology

... this will be an evolving list through the year; these are the present articles to date ...




How the Reformational Church Brought Secularism to Society

Cometh the End of Days in Postmodernism's Deconstructive Light

A Response to Dr. Geisler's Interpretive Reaction to Emergent Postmodernism

Emergent, Postmodern Theology's Resurrection of Christian Orthodoxy

Reconstructing An Emergent Theology that is Postmodern, Postsecular, and Orthodox


Index - An Open Faith and Open Theology



Index to An Open Faith and Open Theology


Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 1

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 2

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 3 (incomplete)

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 4 (incomplete)

The Many Voices of the Church - A Quick Assessment of the 2014 ETS & AAR Conference Meetings




Transparent Moments of Scholarship when a Theologian Must Either Stay or Change, Part 1

My Journey Out of Inerrancy to a Broader Hermeneutic

This quiz might help you find the right denomination

Center-Set v. Boundary-Set Maintance - "The Ties that Bind that Must be Broken," Parts 1-3

Four Areas That Will Challenge American Evangelicalism

An Identity Crisis for the Postmodern Church Today - "Just What Is It?"

Book Review: "The Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism"

Trick-or-Treat? What Does It Mean to be Unified in Christ?

R.E. Slater - Rebirth (a poem)

Should Christians Resist the Pressure to Interpret the Bible Culturally?

How Narrow or Broad is Your View of Jesus and Scripture?

Working Towards a Biblical Interpretation that is both Relevant and Accurate

Cometh the End of Days in Postmodernism's Deconstructive Light

What does it mean to be a Postmodern Christian?

The Emerging God of Emergent Theology (with no Intro)

The Emerging God of Emergent Theology (with Intro)

Ecology and Doctrine. How One May Affect the Other

The Calf Path of an Open, Discerning Faith

Do We Have an Open Bible or a Closed Bible? Or, What Makes An Open Bible Closed?

Rebirth: Towards An Open Bible and Emerging Faith

Can an Open Bible compete with a Dead One?

The Presence of God in an Open Bible

The Emergence of Prayer to that of Tradition

The Knowledge of the Holy, by A.W. Tozer [.pdf]

Allowing One's Theology to Change and Grow, Adapt and Adjust

Thinking Through a Post-Modern, Post-Evangelic Christianity