Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: R.E. Slater

"Time and a Fox Turning the Wheel of Fortune with People of all Ranks to the Right" (c.1526)

Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (c.1471–1528)

The Wheel of Time
by R.E. Slater

The Wheel of Time turns,
as ages come and pass,
each leaving memories,
birthing legends long pass.

Legends fade to myths,
till myths were long forgot,
in Ages of long ago,
becoming legends once again.

R.E. Slater
June 19, 2021; rev August 9, 2021

*adapted fr. Robert Jordan

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

poetry link

The Wheel or the Anvil?

by R.E. Slater

History has been shown

turning as a fated Wheel

when looking backwards,

steadily churning forwards,

slipping and grinding,

upwards or downwards,

on rising helical axial.

The Anvil too has been

a hardened, useful tool,
smashing and grinding,
unmade and made,
till all is remade
the reflecting pools
of one's Creator.

Myself, I wish to grow

life as it becomes, natural-like,
taking what is, or isn't,
forming what could be
from what can be, raising

what lies hidden within,
blazing passion's beauty.

R.E. Slater

June 19, 2021; rev August 9, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

To Understand Process is First to

Understand Processual Processes

by R.E. Slater

I know these past few months have seemed like a Hodgepodge of topics. I've covered Christian politics, LBTGQ, Feminism, BLM, Christian Humanism (=Social Justice), Ecological Civilizations, Evolution and Divine Love, Life in a Secular Age, Process Christianity and Religion (such as Islam), Quantum Physics, Open Theism, Relational Theism, Process Philosophy, Process Theology, Lent and Resurrection Sunday.

Needless to say we've covered a bit... but there's a reason I've been writing and posting so many diverse articles which I hope by now you may have discovered my reasons but if you haven't let me share them with you....

The What and Why of Processual Process Philosophy

Firstly, the study of process philosophy and theology is composed of many parts. These parts are not simply in the religious area... certainly it affects the spiritual life of the interior, one's faith and beliefs... but even as spirituality is everywhere and not simply within a person we must then offer to discuss society at large, how it cross-sects with itself and nature, and nature with living, and the many disciplines of science, arts, and the humanities. Spiritual is everywhere when thought of in the sense of a God and creation in process to itself. And if one is to be able to apprehend the orthology of process philosophy then one needs to be able to see it in all the world and not simply think of it in parochial terms of archaic phenomenological or existential expressionism.

Thus I posted quite a few articles on evolution and quantum physics to detail the naturalistic flow and movement of mass interacting with space and time. The psychedelic mushroom philosopher, Terrence McKenna, said it thusly (as heard through mine ears):

"...History grows through a nexus of completion. These nexi grow [and weave] themselves [together] towards a concrescence of extremely high novelty in whatever medium they are embedded within. This then shows that any localized state of high complexity can - and will - move through all lower orders of mediums while

exerting a kind of attraction to, or from, itself.... That is, "as gravity draws us through space" so "time draws us through [relational] concrescence." Which is why things become more and more complex, [expressed] in faster and faster [historic cycles]...."

The Foundation of Terence McKenna's Ideas -

Alfred North Whiteheads Concrescence and Process

From his talk entitled "The World and its Double"

Processual Process as Foundation

Without understanding the process-foundation of unique (or novel) elemental constructs in the universe we would have no us, no stars, no Earth. And I think the quantum sciences in particular show the exquisite flow of processes through time in space in which we live, and move, and have our being.

Another example can be found within the flow of biology (cf. Everything Flows) describing the processual nature of biologic life. We may see the macro worlds of nature but deep within its quantum cellular matrices are its elementals constructs which are never static, ever flowing and in relational rhythm with one other.

Our bodies are not merely composed of flesh and blood but deep within the body's organic substructures of cells can be found the quantum physics of its biology bound together in a macro entity we call our bodies constituting who we are and how we function. As humans, we flow as as the world of creation flows. We are no less, nor no more, than the cosmos around us... each flowing together, interacting with one another, all making us the "Us" which we know and perhaps love.

As such, Process Philosophy states that all events - whether biological, geological, or astronomical - are formed of foundational elementals compiled together and affecting one another from first to last in the cosmic batter of force, mass, and energy. That we live in a panexistential, panpsychic cosmos of "being and becoming". Never at rest. Always in motion. Always pulling together and pulling apart. It is the nature of life to be in chaos and randomized disorder.

And it is for this reason why Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism becomes so profound as the comic interplay of life moves through time and space in harmony - or in disharmony - with itself. Either creating wellbeing and value or destroying the essence of the same. Ancient and modernized Asian philosophies and religious expressions have indicated the same in terms of cosmopsychological metaphysics expressed in natural and human agency seeking to find personal or individuated harmony, balance, or rhythm. Whitehead calls these elementals as individuating prehending and concrescing moments of intake and outtake against all which is met through the restrictive or enhancing mediums we move through.

How Does Process Philosophy Affect Christianity?

Now I say all this so that when we turn our minds to the bible and Christian theology (as have other world philosophies and religions have sought to do) we might begin thinking in terms of the divine-ever-evolving-creational moments of renewal, redemption, restoration, or resurrection.

Whenever God speaks, or moves, or creates actuality in the experience of the cosmos God is always doing so through His own Being and Essence which is essential a formed and forming processual ontological sense of spiritual evolving. Always in growth. Always in interaction with creation (as well as the Divine Self). And always forming and reforming in response to the agency fill world of creation granted by Divine Love to be and become.

God then is a processual Being. Not a far off, distant and transcendent sort of uncaring, diffident (shy), or holier-than-thou sort of Being. But a Divine Being in fullest pronounced interaction to the very creation S/He or TransGod has created. God is the Wholly Other who is Wholly embedded and enmeshed within the very creation begun by the offerings of His heart's songs to become, and then become again and again and again, ever and always. Thus creation can be described as inherently evolutionary from its very roots to its many possible worlds of being and becoming. Neither God, nor His creation, is ever limited.

So when Christians speak of God or of God's divine activity or of Jesus or of the Christian life of love and humanitarian outreach, we must thank in process terms of what this meant and means to our beliefs about Theology Proper, Christology, Theodicy (the problem of evil), Creation, Harmatology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology, Bibliology, or even Eschatology. The entirety of Christian theology and outlook now changes. No longer held in static thoughts of eternal objects, places, and permanence, but in dynamic envisioning of the phenomenological and existential as real and practical when reflecting movement, flow, rhythm, and balance.

A Faith Conclusion

One's view of the Bible tends to structure one's thoughts about God and salvation, church and testimony, evangelical witness and faith expression. If God, heaven, church, love are simply stated in terms of static eternal objects such as expressed by Plato in ancient Greek society; or in terms of philosophical argument and logic as Aristotle did; or as each were then integrated by Aquinas into Catholic Thomistic thought and idiom; then we will miss the idea of processual creational processes uniquely embedding themselves into all of life, its evolving relationships, and yearning for love and wellbeing within a world of healing or harming agency.

The world of divine processes are not static. They do not consist as representations of eternal objects. But as present moments of events flowing, incorporating, building, growing, rejecting, removing, etc, lurching chaotically forward seeking a kind of divine resting place to be what it yearns and become what it is driven by. Divine creational presence of God and world are intermeshed transactions of synchronous moments reaching forward with the divine breath inhaling and exhaling momentary states of love and duty, letting go and putting on (ahem, the old man and new man, not the battle armor of sin and evil, but the guarding armor of love, mercy and forgiveness).

When we read of Christian biblical or systematic theology in the bible let us learn to read it in terms of process thought rather than the classic traditional political economics of death, guilt, isolation, and division. Whether in the bible or in real life today, God is evolving with us in seeking out a Christ-based redemptive level of being which may become more thoroughly than it is at presence.

And like the divine, we are as much in process as God is, each relationally experiencing the universal world from it's differing attitudes of secular or religious understanding stirred within life's depths and resounce. God said so Himself when He said,

Romans 8:37 "...But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves us. 38) For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39) nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

If this is what was meant when Paul spoke to the Romans then we may think of Christ's atoning work in life and death as a divinely lived salvation working its way throughout all creational experiences of life. That God who is both different and alike, Other and presently present, is ever moving over the waters of time and through His Spirit of Divine Breath is drawing, calling, bidding, seeking all moments to become one in God's Living Self. We each, along with everything and everyone else, are daily bathed in the baptismal waters of divine love and presence drawing processual agency towards spiritual life and liveliness.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

June 9, 2021

The Process Metaphysics of

Alfred North Whitehead (*1861, †1947)

Jan 10, 2016

A short introduction to the process philosophy & process theology of Alfred North Whitehead (*1861, †1947), containing several photos and 4 speakers, describing some core hypotheses of Whitehead's metaphysics. The speakers are: John B. Cobb, David Ray Griffin, Charles Hartshorne and Rupert Sheldrake.