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

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 4



Process vs Classic Church Theism:
Cobb v Geisler
Part 4

by R.E. Slater


Process Theology Debate:
Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb
Posted: Aug 21, 2021


De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of 
classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic systems purposely putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as into process thought itself. Words, Ideas, and Iterations that simply aren't there. Geisler was fighting for his version of God. The process people I know are fighting for a better version of God than the one the church has lately been expressing. - re slater
Pleases note: Part 2 of this video is not on YouTube video - nor could I locate it anywhere except here as linked below." - re slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism
"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.
However, as stated above, Geisler had simply barked out his own convictions without any attempt in his life to ever consider process theology as helpful or insightful. Years later we find Geisler's evangelicalism in the toilet. Instead of fighting Norm should've been listening. - re slater

 

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Earlier Posts







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The Story of the Bible 4

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon
even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

The Process God of The Bible, Part 1

One of the things which attracted me to process theology is it's brokenness. How it shares in the suffering of others offering compassion and help to those in need. I've never have seen this with stricter religious dogmas placing beliefs over goodness and kindness.

Process theology is one of those approaches to God which sees God as loving and good in all that God did, does, or will ever do. No biblical floods which wiped out the world, no plagues upon Egypt for not worshipping Him (or Her; since I write as a man I usually use the masculine pronoun instead of feminine or neutral Other). No fiery Armageddon end to the old earth.

Why? Because it runs counter to who God is. God is Love. By this quality all other qualities of God are mitigated. When angry God's love allows perfect, loving justice, not officious divine fury. When moved to great revenge God's love makes God incapable of acting in this way as God strives to help and save.

Freewill worlds are not the kind of worlds where one might find a God controlling all outcomes. Influencing all outcomes... Sure! But indetrminant (open) freewill (relational) worlds are the kind of worlds which God's love necessarily brought forth creational freewill as part-and-parcel of God's loving Image (Imago Dei). In those undetermined, freewill worlds we have a loving God  who is present in loving actions. Each action producing its own streams of processual consequences. But  with each-and-every consequence process theology says God's love permeates all things to do the loving, kind and good thing as He can in a freewilled world besotted with sin and evil.

When the ancient world flooded as the Genesis account tells us in Noah's story it was because of quasi-regional natural events - even as we see today in places around the world being flooded out by storm and wind, fire and climate change. When the plagues descended upon Egypt such plagues resulted from natural events... one asks how, in what way, would God have sent such plagues of hardship and suffering. Can a loving God do such a thing or were these natural events complexly colliding at the same time in the same area? To myself, it sounds like God was somehow involved... but does divine activity elicit judgment if God is love. These are the kinds of questions process Christians hold back on and are much less reticent to calm evil as God sent unlike our Calvinistic brethren (of which I was one not too many years before).

What I am trying to say is that God is not, and cannot be the catch-basin for all the sin and evil done in this world. Sin and evil more likely are simple descriptors of a freewilled creation not acting in accordance to it's divine Imago-Dei nature. A nature structured towards wellbeing, not harm. God is love. God cannot harm. God would not harm. But harm does result when living in a freewilled creation. God's freewill Nature is always TO BE and CHOOSE TO BE love at all times over all other emotions, actions, and judgments.

Thus we ask the questions of good and evil? Of right and wrong? Of whether God cares or not? Whether God is present in our sufferings or not? Or whether God can do anything for us in a world of many possible evils such as the one we are presently witnessing under a cruel war waged by the Russian leader Putin claiming God is on his side to bring the world back to an Imperial form of Christiandom (which, of course, I find conveniently stated as propaganda to those poor Christians caught in a conflict nobody wants and everybody understands as a land-to-power grab).

And so, process theology approaches the subject of the problem of sin and evil (e.g., theodicy) by always reaffirming God's steady love at all times, for all people (and creation), and in all events. Process theology will not affirm a controlling, determining God moved by wrath and anger.

In process thought, God is in the life-affirming struggle found in the event of time and being itself. That all possible actualities concrease based upon their potentialities for bringing wellbeing into that event. Said in another way, God does not control creation but fills creation with divine possibility moment-to-moment to become its truer self rather than it's untrue self. To find its lack in God's Self and not in something else baser and unloving.

Summary

The very first thing I learned about process theology is that it speaks to God's love and that we, as God's followers, must learn to speak this same language that God speaks - and has spoken - to us in His holy person, Jesus Christ.

Love is the summa cum laud of the Christian faith. If the Christian faith is unloving then it does not speak for God but for it's self, it's own "rightness," it's own "truth."

One last, I may be presently persuaded that the process kind of faith I wish to follow is loving and following an Incarnation Christ, but if after all its conjectures and suppositions and speculations if it does not result in the outcome of seeing God's love more clearly across all of my past Christianized God-beliefs and doctrines, than process theology is yet another bankrupt and futile path unworthy to be tread. We follow Jesus. We do not follow an institution, religion or men. Process Theology speaks to Jesus and is learning to speak more and more about Jesus as it grows up and matures. I wish to be one of those who help speak of Jesus more clearly.


My Story, Part 2

A few years ago my wife and I built a house. Not intentionally. No, we bought an older home vacated for five or so years by the death of its widow whose husband had passed on before her. It was kept up and rented out to a family member while it lay on the market unsold over a several year period. Finally it came to us. We bought it. Were thrilled to have it. And decided to do light renovation work by replacing the electrical wiring, older, rotting plumbing lines, and masses of cardboard insulation across all attic spaces.

We began the project and were about 45 days into it when discovering one day the entire wooden foundation was warped and rotted. We were under the belief that the house sat on a poured cement foundation by the inspectors we paid to tell us about our purchase before completing its sale. At this discovery the old house soon became a money pit as hard earned savings were spent to jack the house up 16 feet into the air - including the garage - remove all the lower attached levels including the lower floor/basement, drop off all the wings, while keeping but expanding by half again the main trunk of the 34 year old home. Our purchase intentions went from a remodeling / light renovation job to major renovation within days.

It was heart breaking. The upper floors of the house had already been gutted, we were living in the lower level, and now we had to vacate in order to do a full restoration. We couldn't sell it as is (too much money lose) and couldn't remodel the first floor as it sat upon a rotting foundation. We had nowhere to go but forward into a total rebuild.

So for the next 14 months we dealt with the loss of funds, monetary outflow, taxation problems across the board, the expense of financing a large project no bank would touch, no access to builder loans, and about every headache you can imagine as the old house was stripped and became a new house from foundation to chimney.

No longer would the old house sit on failing wooden walls but on solid, 12 foot high poured cement walls. After 8-9 months of demolition and rebuilding the expanded structure, the house was jacked down and rebuilt as it was meant to be built in the tradition of a contemporary prairie-styled home. However, though the project is now done the decisions we made during four years ago continue to haunt us.  We went from a paid mortgage to a new mortgage and have done exactly backwards what the financial experts tell retirees to do. It has been a headache and one of our own making when not deciding to take a huge loss and walk away.

Now perhaps I have said too much. It is a story many others have repeated due to floods, fires, storms, civil war, famine, drought, loss of crops, loss of job, displacement, illness, death of loved ones, lawsuits, criminal indictment, drugs, drinking, addictions, mental or physiological imbalance, family problems, divorce, children with medical ailments, aged cars, broken down heating systems, etc and etc. In one way or another, if you live long enough, hardship will challenge each of us to rethink how we might respond when difficulty comes as it surely will no matter how careful you try to be.




And having been through several personal hardships more than once, none have been easy to remove or lightly travelled over. Each, in their own way, have been devastating in their own way, as I write thinking of job loss, two miscarriages, a wrecked car knocking me unconscious with blood coming off my skull, and a policeman taking me home by 9 in the morning to discover my wife in tears having lost her second child and me telling her I had finished my job and was let go an hour earlier which is why I was driving home before being plowed into by a large van illegally turning onto the road. No job. No money. No first child. No second child. And married by now six years. Only heartbreaking grief. And yes, we've been through many other difficulties spiritually, personally, and physically. Nothing has been easy in this life.

I suppose suffering and experience are our best teachers but each of us can testify to the fact that we each wish it were some other way. That life would be beautiful, carefree, with very little hardships, if none. So too with the narrative found throughout the bible. Every prophet, priest, scribe, tribal or village or clan leader, family member, shepherd, carpenter, pottery maker, home maker, king, soldier, and child has come to God during their time on this earth and have asked the kind of questions one cannot easily answer in this life.

I was raised in a religious tradition which asked these same questions and tried to help fellow believers make sense out of their lives when harm and ill befell them or on the church's membership. Our church fellowship have always, always been meaningful to us, even though I may have approached their questions with other lines of thoughts and helps than the ones being leaned into by the afflicted one or the church. Nevertheless, I also knew then - as I know now - that our Lord comes to us we are because God is big enough to guide and counsel us from our present circumstances however difficult.


Conclusion

Thinking back to my housing project, the two choices I had on day 45 was to completely demolish our newly purchased home or completely gut it and build it back to completeness from its skeleton structure which had been laid bare. I chose the latter even though the former would've been far easier and less aggressive.

Theology works this way too. When in Part 1, I shared my solitary time spent in a wilderness of devastation, doubt and uncertainty, I had two choices. Leave my Christian faith and attempt a resurrection of some sort on my own as many have done in the past. Or, I could stay with the remnants of my Christian faith, discover what those deconstructed remnants might be which I might reconstruct as new cornerstone and foundation stones, and reconstruct all that lay above and below using the latest and greatest theologies and philosophies of the time.

I've chosen the latter by first leaving Calvinism and its neo-Christian counterparts while keep what Reformed traditions I could. Then taking up Arminianism (sic, Methodism, Wesleyanism, older Baptist traditions). From Arminianism the Lord somehow guided me without outside influence or readings into open theism and at the same time relational theism.

At the time I was writing about these theologies I felt they belonged together and wrote for awhile about how open AND relational theology fit together as natural contemporary outgrowths from Arminianism. All bible based. All from the biblical pages. Next I began working on my Baptist and Reformed teachings moving towards Emergent and Progressive Christianity, and finally coming across what I was looking for. What was it? The long and short of it is rebuilding my biblical Christian faith on a better philosophic theology than the one I had inherited, had become traditionalized, and was holding Christianity back from loving and ministering as it should.

Peace, my friends. Peace.

R.E. Slater
November 12, 2021
Published March 14, 2022


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