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

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Walking in the Footsteps of John the Baptist, Part 2

  


Walking in the Footsteps of John the Baptist, Part 2

James McGrath has recently traveled to Israel to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist. I thought it might be of interest that we journey with James as well to discover the early days of Jesus' ministry through his cousin John. Enjoy.

R.E. Slater
August 25, 2022



In the Footsteps of John the Baptist Part 2:
Yardenit, Tiberias, and Bet Alfa

by James F. McGrath
July 11, 2022


I shared photos on Facebook during my brief visit to Tiberias on the shore of Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberias (named by the Gospel of Mark the “Sea of Galilee” and now more commonly known by that name). When I did so I wrote that Herod Antipas built cities, buildings, monuments of various sorts. John the Baptist built a ritual with water. Today the ruins of Herod’s capital in Tiberias don’t have much left of them and no one goes out of their way to see them (apart from a handful of people like me who are interested in ancient history). People travel from all over the world, on the other hand, to visit places that have even the vaguest of association with John. There is surely something noteworthy in that.

When I referred to places that have only a vague association with John I was thinking of a great many of the sites I visited in the Holy Land which claim to be connected with John. Yardenit, however, was first and foremost in my mind. It is promoted as “the baptismal site on the Sea of Galilee” and it has everything that the more traditional site at Qasr al-Yahud has and more, including a much more elaborate gift shop (which one must pass through to get to the baptismal area). While the traditional site (which I also visited on this trip) has been a place of pilgrimage since ancient times (although whether it was precisely here that the Madaba map and other ancient sources were pointing to is another matter). Yardenit? It was created very recently in order to give Christian pilgrims a place to go when Qasr al-Yahud was closed due to the conflicts between Israel and Jordan. Although not of historical interest in that sense, it is perhaps even more fascinating as a result to consider why it is that pilgrims come here and find the experience meaningful.


Returning to Tiberias, or rather its vicinity, I also stopped at Hamat Tiberias. It is the remnants of a city that was once separate from Tiberias but is now incorporated within the limits of the modern city. It had a hot spring and a synagogue with mosaics of a sort very common in ancient times, featuring the zodiac whose twelve signs were associated with the 12 tribes of Israel.


A few days later, as I traveled south along the Jordan River valley towards the place I would stay next, I visited the synagogue at Bet Alfa which has a similar but much better preserved zodiac. These were clearly not at all unusual in the centuries after the time of John and Jesus. These interest me not only for general reasons of understanding ancient Judaism. In Mandaean texts there is also an identification of the Jewish God with Shemesh, the Sun. The seven (planets) and the twelve (constellations of stars) are malevolent forces which the Gnostic prepares through baptism to escape from when they die, and whose influence they resist in the present. The imagery in synagogues and Mandaean literature are part of a conversation about how to view the creator deity and the physical creation.


Although in no way associated with John the Baptist, I also want to mention Bet Yerah, a site near the hotel where I stayed. I found it by accident when walking along a path that runs beside Lake Kinneret. There are ruins there which are almost 5,000 years old. Anything of comparable age anywhere else in the world would be developed as a site worth visiting. In Israel it is simply par for the course, just like finding fragments of first-century pottery.

On my way southwards I also stopped at Belvoir Castle (Jordan Star National Park), mostly to enjoy the view it provides of the Jordan River valley. There is an impressive crusader fortification up a very winding road. (Winding roads were a recurring theme on the trip.) It does have a connection with John the Baptist, albeit the most distant perhaps of any of the connections explored on this trip. Belvoir Castle was built by Knights of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem. This famous military order associated with the crusades took John the Baptist for their name and patron.

More photos from my trip will follow. In the meantime, here is one last one. I often got up to watch the sun rise over Lake Kinneret/the Sea of Galilee…




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