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

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Review: "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" by Pete Enns

The Deeper Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: We Are Not Allowed to Use It
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/01/the-deeper-scandal-of-the-evangelical-mind-we-are-not-allowed-to-use-it/
 
by Pete Enns
January 25, 2013
Comments
 
Mark Noll’s 1995 book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind hit a raw nerve when he declared ”The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” He argued that Evangelical scholarship had a minimal presence in doing serious academic research, and that they need to–and can–do better.
 
His followup book in 2011, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, is Noll’s theological vision for how to move forward–and I don’t mind adding that Noll devoted about 15 pages discussing my 2005 book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament as a (not “the”) constructive model for moving forward.
 
Noll’s books have been a wake up call for many and I think his comments are perceptive and penetrating.
 
Recently, Rachel Held Evans added an important dimension to this discussion. She posted that a deeper problem than the evangelical mind is the scandal of the evangelical heart.
 
What rocked Rachel’s faith wasn’t the failure of the evangelical intellectual project, but the “failure to maintain emotional integrity”–seen, for example, in the emotional detachment some show toward Canaanite genocide in the Bible. Why are so many Evangelicals “fine” with it? Because it’s in the Bible. End of discussion.
 
Rachel has a solid point. I would add the scandal of the evangelical heart includes the manner in which controversies are handled–by which I mean differences of opinion that quickly become “controversies” with a giddy sense of anticipation for the hunt.
 
Back to Noll. I have felt for years that, as right as he is, Noll may be too optimistic.
 
In my experience, the real problem isn’t simply a failure on the part of Evangelicals to engage the world of thought. Evangelicals earning higher degrees and publishing their findings in the wider intellectual community isn’t what’s needed.
 
The real scandal of the Evangelical mind is that we are not allowed to use it.
 
Calling for Evangelical involvement in public academic discourse is useless if trained Evangelicals are legitimately afraid of what will happen to them if they do.
 
A more basic need is the creation of an Evangelical culture where the exercise of the Evangelical mind is expected and encouraged.
 
But, with few exceptions, that culture does not exist. The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that degrees, books, papers, and other marks of prestige are valued–provided you come to predetermined conclusions.
 
Biblical scholarship is the recurring focal point of this type of scandal.
 
*Sure, dig into evolution and the ancient context of Genesis, but by golly you’d better give me an Adam when you’re done.
 
*Knock yourself out with scholarship on the Pentateuch, but make sure at the end of it all you affirm that Moses basically wrote it.
 
*Be part of cutting edge archaeological studies, but when you’re done we want to see you affirm the historicity of the exodus and conquest of Canaan pretty much as the Bible [literally] describes them, regardless of what others say.
 
*Do whatever work you need to do, but when the dust settles, explain how your conclusions fit with inerrancy.
 
The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that doctrine determines academic conclusions.
 
Behind all this is a deeper problem. Evangelicalism is not fundamentally an intellectual organism but an apologetic one. It did not come to be in order to inspire academic exploration but to maintain certain theological distinctives by intellectual means. These intellectual means are circumscribed by Evangelical dogma, though avoiding Fundamentalist anti-intellectualism.
 
As an intellectual phenomenon, the Evangelical experiment is a defensive movement. This raises some obvious questions for me.
 
Is the Evangelical movement able to create the safe space necessary for the exercise of the Evangelical mind–or, does the adjective “Evangelical” already draw clear limits for any intellectual pursuit?
 
Is Evangelicalism self-corrective enough to not only allow but to encourage the exercise of mind, to risk the possibility of discovering that theological change is needed?
 
Can a movement defined by theological defense transform to a movement that willingly accommodates theological change?
 
If not, the deeper scandal of the Evangelical mind will continue.
 
 

"Ancient Art and Imagination" by Pre-historic Minds

 
World's oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind
 
Julia Sklar, reporter


01172560_001-600px.jpg
(Image: Moravian Museum, Anthropos Institute)
 
 
Twenty-six thousand years ago in the Czech Republic, one of our ice-age ancestors selected a hunk of mammoth ivory and carved this enigmatic portrait of a woman - the oldest ever found. By looking at artefacts like this as works of art, rather than archaeological finds, a new exhibition at the British Museum in London hopes to help us see them and their creators with new eyes.

Human ancestors date back millions of years, but the earliest evidence of the human mind producing symbolic imagery as a form of creative expression cannot be much older than 100,000 years. That evidence comes from Africa: this exhibition explores the later dawning of representative art in Europe and shows that even before the remarkable paintings of the Lascaux cave, France, humans were able to make work as subtle as the expressive face above.
 
"By looking at the oldest European sculptures and drawings we are looking at the deep history of how our brains began to store, transform and communicate ideas as visual images," says Jill Cook, the show's curator. "The exhibition will show that we can recognise and appreciate these images. Even if their messages and intentions are lost to us, the skill and artistry will still astonish the viewer."
 
Cook points to a figurative 23,000-year-old mammoth ivory sculpture from Lespugue, France, which is also in the exhibition. It so fascinated Pablo Picasso with its cubist qualities that he kept two copies of it. "This figure demonstrates a visual brain capable of abstraction, the essential quality needed to acquire and manipulate knowledge which underpins our ability to analyse what we see," says Cook.
 
 
Ice Age Art: Arrival of the modern mind runs at the British Museum, London, from 7 February to 26 May
 
 
 
 
An exhibition 40,000 years in the making. Discover masterpieces from the last Ice Age drawn from across Europe in this groundbreaking show. Created between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago by artists with modern minds like our own, this is a unique opportunity to see the world's oldest known sculptures, drawings and portraits. - Dec.12, 2012