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

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Homebrewed Christianity - Walking with Soren Kierkegaard, Part 4




Homebrewed Christianity - 
Walking with Soren Kierkegaard,
Part 4





Faith, Doubt and Kierkegaard
with J. Aaron Simmons
November 3, 2021
This week, J. Aaron Simmons joins me to discuss philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard died in 1855, his message has deep resonance and relevance today. Enjoy!  
NOTE: Those into process theology like myself should also listen to the podcast with Catherine Keller which is next in line after Aaron's Kierkegaarde podcast. - re slater






* * * * * * *


SHORT TAKES, RESOURCES, AND MORE

NOTE: Pay especial attention to Stephen Backhouse below. - re slater

Søren Kierkegaard on Reintroducing Christianity into Christendom
by Stephen Backhouse
Sep 20, 2017


Christendom, rather than being an official connection between a government and a religion, is most often found in attitudes and mistaken assumptions. In today's Seven Minute Seminary, Dr. Stephen Backhouse demonstrates how Søren Kierkegaard can be appropriated to challenge our core assumptions about identity and allegiance.



PHILOSOPHY - Soren Kierkegaard
Jun 26, 2015


Soren Kierkegaard is useful to us because of the intensity of his despair at the compromises and cruelties of daily life. He is a companion for our darkest moments.

 


Greatest Philosophers In History | Søren Kierkegaard
Aug 18, 2020


Søren Kierkegaard was a profound and prolific 19th century writer and philosopher in the Danish Golden Age of intellectual and artistic activity. He wrote about how we choose to live and what it means to be alive, centred in the individual or “existing being”. He is regarded as the father of Existentialism. The stress of subjectivity is one of Kierkegaard’s main contributions.

His concept of anxiety or angst is one of the most profound pre-Freudian works of psychology. His most popular work includes the leap of faith, the concept of angst, the three stages on life (aesthetic, ethical, religious), among others.


Amazon Link

The Essential Kierkegaard Paperback
May 30, 2000

by Søren Kierkegaard (Author),
Howard V. Hong (Editor), Edna H. Hong (Editor)

This is the most comprehensive anthology of Søren Kierkegaard's works ever assembled in English. Drawn from the volumes of Princeton's authoritative Kierkegaard's Writings series by editors Howard and Edna Hong, the selections represent every major aspect of Kierkegaard's extraordinary career. They reveal the powerful mix of philosophy, psychology, theology, and literary criticism that made Kierkegaard one of the most compelling writers of the nineteenth century and a shaping force in the twentieth. With an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings as a whole and explanatory notes for each selection, this is the essential one-volume guide to a thinker who changed the course of modern intellectual history.

The anthology begins with Kierkegaard's early journal entries and traces the development of his work chronologically to the final The Changelessness of God. The book presents generous selections from all of Kierkegaard's landmark works, including Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, and The Sickness unto Death, and draws new attention to a host of such lesser-known writings as Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions and The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air. The selections are carefully chosen to reflect the unique character of Kierkegaard's work, with its shifting pseudonyms, its complex dialogues, and its potent combination of irony, satire, sermon, polemic, humor, and fiction. We see the esthetic, ethical, and ethical-religious ways of life initially presented as dialogue in two parallel series of pseudonymous and signed works and later in the "second authorship" as direct address. And we see the themes that bind the whole together, in particular Kierkegaard's overarching concern with, in his own words, "What it means to exist; . . . what it means to be a human being?

Together, the selections provide the best available introduction to Kierkegaard's writings and show more completely than any other book why his work, in all its creativity, variety, and power, continues to speak so directly today to so many readers around the world.

 




Quick Facts

Birthday: May 5, 1813

Girlfriend: Regine Schlegel (Ex)

Died At Age: 42

Sun Sign: Taurus

Also Known As: Søren Kierkegaard

Born Country: Denmark
Born In: Copenhagen, Denmark

Famous As: Philosopher, Theologian & Religious Author

Father: Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard
Mother: Ane Sørensdatter Lund Kierkegaard
Siblings: Peter Christian Kierkegaard

Died On: November 11, 1855
Place Of Death: Copenhagen, Denmark

Who was Soren Kierkegaard?

  • Soren Kierkegaard was a famous Danish philosopher, theologian and religious author.
  • He was well known for his criticism of the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel.
  • His philosophical work generally deals with the issues of living as a “single individual” and giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking.
  • His work in theology focuses mainly on Christian ethics and institution of the Church. It also deals with the difference between the purely objective proofs of Christianity and a subjective relationship to Jesus Christ.
  • Kierkegaard was also interested in human psychology and his psychological work explores the emotions and the feelings of individuals when facing situations in life.
  • His intellectuality was influenced by Socrates and the Socratic Method.
  • Kierkegaard’s earlier works were mainly written under various pseudonymous characters, presenting their own distinctive viewpoints and interacting with each other.

Childhood & Early Life

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on 5 May 1813, in Copenhagen. His father, Michael Pedersen Kierkegaard, a wealthy hosier, was a self-made man; he was intelligent, but melancholic. Søren’s mother, Ane Sørensdatter Lund, was his second wife. His first marriage to Kirstine Nielsdatter was childless.

Raised as a shepherd boy, Michael experienced great hardship in his childhood. One day, while alone on the heath, he cursed God for his adversities and loneliness. In later years, he believed that he had earned God’s wrath because of that, successfully transmitting his belief to his children.

Before her marriage, Ane Sørensdatter, a cheerful but uneducated woman, was a housemaid with the family. After Kirstine’s death, she found herself pregnant with Michael’s child, which compelled him to marry her. That he got his maid pregnant soon after his wife’s death also added to Michael’s burden of guilt.

Born the youngest of his parents’ seven children, Søren had three sisters and three brothers, out of whom five died young. While Michael was convinced that all his children would die young because of his sin, Søren and his brother, Peter Christian, later a renowned bishop, lived to experience adulthood.

As a child, Søren idolized his father, quickly developing a bond with him, going out with him on imaginary walks during bad weather. During these walks, taking place within the confine of the study, his father would describe the make-believe sights, helping him to develop his power of imagination.

During this period, he probably also inherited from his father his heavy burden of guilt and a belief that his father’s long life and wealth was actually God’s revenge. It often made the young boy depressed and gloomy.

In 1821, after finishing his education at an elementary school, Søren was enrolled at Østre Borgerdyd Gymnasium, a well-regarded “School of Civic Virtue” in Copenhagen. Here, he had a classical education, excelling in Latin and history, finally graduating in 1830.

In 1831, he entered the University of Copenhagen with theology. But he soon lost interest in that, instead being drawn towards literature and philosophy, especially studying fictitious literary figures like Don Juan and Faust, trying to find an existential model that he could follow.

Although he was aware about his father’s sense of gloom since his childhood, quite often becoming depressed because of that, it was only in 1834 that he came to know the reasons. It came as a shock, making him leave home, abandoning the Christian faith in which he was brought up.

Estranged from his father, living with mental turmoil, he began a new search. In 1835, he wrote, “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.… What is truth but to live for an idea?”

In 1838, Søren returned home, being reconciled not only with his father, but also with Christianity, deciding to live by its tenets. Also after his father’s death in the same year, he decided to complete his formal education, financing it with his inheritance of approximately 31,000 rigsdaler.

In June 1841, he completed his dissertation, ‘Om begrebetironi med stadigthensyntil Socrates’ (On the Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates), defending it in September. Finally on 20 October 1841, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen with a Magister Arutim.