Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Index

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 from 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, March 21, 2020

Index - Process Philosophy & Theology

The Index provided here on Process Thought is not exhaustive. To date there are 80+ articles listed in this index by category out of many, many more which could have been listed from this website which are still remaining to be tagged. To these articles other possible related subjects (found in the topical column on the right side of the website) could have been listed, such as open and relational (process) theology, process-based: divine sovereignty, providence, eschatology, sin, ecotheology, evolution, quantum sciences and technologies, life applications, faith applications, and on and on as the subject of Whiteheadian process thought is very deep. Yet this new index at least gives the novice and intermediate lay person familiarity with process thought in its religious, humanitarian, and ecological outreach and direction with enough educational acumen to continue exploring the subject capably on one's own.

Not so long ago I found stagnancy in the classical expression of my Reformed (Baptist) faith as it began to clash with what I had been taught as the "only-and-truest fundamentals of the Christian faith and its doctrine". Specifically, that Jesus is the standard around which all Christian beliefs and ethos practices revolve. Anything less is a prevarication of the Christian faith as it is understood through God's love and salvation. I had belatedly come to realize a decade or two back that those "fundamental ideas and teachings" of my past needed to be "fundamentally" re-envisioned through the lenses of a contemporary cultural, and societal, Christian expression (but importantly without Christian legalism and religiosity). Curiously, when undertaking this complex endeavor to re-appropriate my ancient creedal faith, I didn't expect to lose the gospel of Jesus as I began to intentionally re-actualize Christianity into contemporary societal terms applying post-structural ideas to the subject matters of God, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, sin or the future. On the contrary, by carefully deconstructing Christianity's modernity teachings - then reconstructing Christianity's postmodernity expressions back again - the gospel became clearer than before. It's surprising how cleaning up one's theologic windshield of bug-guts and splattered mud can help the weary driver see the Jesus-road before him so much more clearly!

Certainly, when undertaking this daunting task I realized it would upend all of the old creeds of the church and doctrines as I applied newer, more relevant, theologic language, concepts, and contemporary perspectives to traditional Christianity. The result of this singular vision which the Holy Spirit had years ago burdened my soul to move through was a very long, complex, and rigorous application of redefining my fundamental baptist and later, conservative-evangelical faith heritage, with an updated emergent (progressive) faith stream which I am much more at ease with in its substance and Christian direction than I would've been as a youth just starting out. Lastly, into all of this I am now adding a new Christian foundation known as Process Philosophy and Theology to give all substance and structure. Age and maturity goes a long ways to re-envisioning one's faith. Inasmuch as doubt and uncertainty have properly led my postmodern explorations of faith and the bible I believe those same attitudes used in the formation of scientific theory will continue to assist in leading me forward towards more relevant and missional ideas of the love of God, His divine will for our lives, and how Christ's atoning work is bringing all back together in a fundamental restructuring of mankind and creation. Enjoy. This has not been an easy task of sorting out or rebuilding.

R.E. Slater

April 13, 2020