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

Friday, June 2, 2017

Recommended Book Reads




What does an open, process-driven theology mean? Especially in the expression of a God who is timeless when He may be more earth-bound than we lend credence too? And if so, where then can this "earthy" God be found if not everywhere abounding? Was He intimately involved with the creation of mankind? And if so, how is it then when the science of evolution persuades us otherwise? Or is God the God of evolution who put its processes into place and "pronounced it good"?

Must a moribund Christianity always be moribund or can we look at God and the bible through the lens of the 21st Century to discover what we thought we knew may not be fully true, or not true at all? And if so, whose fault does it lie with? God or His many interpreters "looking through a glass darkly" dispelling fictions with facts, half-truths with cultural biases, or with a studied ignorance that does not enlighten?

If the theology of God has died in this past century than the fault lies with the guardians of its faith refusing to allow it to react and counter-react to postmodern discussion. The apostles of apology who give a defense of their faith do to that faith a great disservice when refusing to listen to the contemporary theologies providing more relevant fundamental orthodoxies unperceived by the Ancients, the Greeks, Medievals, and Modern day saints.

Theology must challenge as much as console, stand up to the vagaries of human sentiment and politics, and redirect our attention to the very God who is our life, breath, redeemer, and guide. And so we must read challenging theologies because they must challenge in order to break down old line thinking that is no longer orthodox or helpful.

To be missional is to be relevant. And to be relevant is to be willing to be challenged in past cherished beliefs and faiths. Jesus' theology did just this and if we are to be prophets of God than we must learn how to speak the old truths with the new, the new turths with the old, in ways that are beneficial, liberating, and gracious.

R.E. Slater
June 2, 2017

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The End of the Timeless God

Amazon Link
The claim that God is timeless has been the majority view throughout church history. However, it is not obvious that divine timelessness is compatible with fundamental Christian doctrines such as creation and incarnation. Theologians have long been aware of the conflict between divine timelessness and Christian doctrine, and various solutions to these conflicts have been developed. In contemporary thought, it is widely agreed that new theories on the nature of time can further help solve these conflicts. Do these solutions actually solve the conflict? Can the Christian God be timeless? The End of the Timeless God sets forth a thorough investigation into the Christian understanding of God and the God-world relationship. It argues that the Christian God cannot be timeless









Stars Beneath Us

Amazon Link
In ways both confident and gentle, Stars Beneath Us brilliantly shows God's presence in the ever-evolving cosmos. Relying on his upbringing as a Baptist, his doctoral work in experimental nuclear physics and gamma-ray astronomy, and his ordination to the gospel ministry in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Paul Wallace weaves a book unlike any other in faith and science literature. Instead of engaging the debates of natural theology or proofs for the existence of God, this is a call to courage for those who fear a true encounter with the cosmos will distance them from God.

With a winsome mix of compelling personal narrative and insightful biblical analysis, the author calls into perspective the scale of the cosmos and our place within it. Relying on a theology of openness to the world, Stars Beneath Us will inspire readers to engage with the natural world in new ways and find God, as it turns out, everywhere.











The End of Adam and Eve

Amazon Link
Today’s science is changing the way we see ourselves. We know now that Neandertals were not primitive brutes but that they interbred with our ancestors. We also know that interbreeding between ancient human populations played a key role in shaping humanity today.

The End of Adam and Eve grows out of the conviction that good theology takes the latest science seriously. The most recent findings, like interbreeding with Neandertals and the re-dating of the first tools and cave art, are brought together here in a strongly Christian theological vision of humanity created through evolution for unity and completion in Jesus Christ.

This book summarizes the science but also builds upon it to offer an updated Christian theological interpretation of human beings as created in the image of God and made into one new humanity in Christ. A brief excerpt from the final chapter…

"As a flowing stream is separated by an island and then rejoins, human communities separated, changed, and then came back together genetically. To ask which group is human is to ask which branch is the stream." Diverging, we became many things. We became Denisovans, Neandertals, and many other unknown ancestral groups. By being them, we became us. Converging, we are still on our way to becoming one thing, one unified global human community. For Christians, our hope for one unified global human community has a concrete form. It has a name. It is Jesus Christ. Faced by all the racism and xenophobia that still work their violence and evil in our world, Christians defiantly and faithfully proclaim that Christ makes us all one."

Science and Christianity

Amazon Link
Science and Christianity is an accessible, engaging introduction to topics at the intersection of science and Christian theology:
  • A philosophically orientated treatment that introduces the relationship of science to Christianity and explores to what extent the findings of science affect traditional Christian theology.
  • Addresses important theological topics in light of contemporary science, including divine action, the problem of natural evil, and eschatology.
  • Historically oriented chapters and chapters covering methodological principles for both science and theology provide the reader with a strong foundational understanding of the issues
  • Includes feature boxes highlighting quotations, biographies of major scientists and theologians, key terms, and other helpful information
  • Issues are presented as fairly and objectively as possible, with strengths and weaknesses of particular interpretations fully. discussed





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