A Postmodern Process Relational
Cosmotheology
Our vision is of a world in which an evolving interconnected universe, with its unique community of life on our home planet Earth, is a context for understanding, belonging, inspiration, decision-making and creating the future. - Deeptime Network (DTN)
The Deeptime Network's development of de Chardin's contributions along the lines of an “Ultra-Physics” and Berry's “New [Cosmic]Story” - is dedicated to evolving in like manner-and-spirit to these theologian's work, in an effort to be at once consonant with science, world religions, and all fields of knowledge, bar none.
Why I wrote this article
I spent a bit of time yesterday expanding and deepening the original article here presented to help better explain the differences from other competing, non-processual Christian and non-Christian cosmotheological systems being presented alongside Whitehead. Hopefully this effort might help guide a few applicants so that their energies might be more happily applied to staying on the larger paths of truth-seeking as versus the many time-wasting bunny trails deviating from Process Studies and leading "everywhere, all-at-once" (as a recent, 2-thumbs down, movie had used in its title) pretending knowledge but more simply catching up the strays not staying their path. - re slater
Process Philosophy & Theology's Differences to Other Proposed Integral CosmoTheological Theories
Apparently Process Philosophers and Theologians are not the only ones seeking an Integral Theory of Everything (ITOE). While roaming across the internet I discovered what I believe to be a Catholic-based CosmoTheological system championed by the earlier figures of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry. These were visionaries whose life and work were inspired by integral thinking and unitive consciousness.
The Deeptime Network on whose website I discovered these details goes on to state similar ideas and discussions as my own Process Community. A community which has been researching these same topical areas for the past hundred years founded upon it's own figurehead of Alfred North Whitehead (sic, as John Cobb would say, "But importantly proceeded by many others before Whitehead").
Having belatedly discovered Whitehead on my search for a more holistic hermeneutic, this fraught journey quickly ended once discovering Whitehead as I shifted my focus to the more foundational subject-matter troubling all biblical studies - that of a sufficient philosophic-theological foundation. A foundation which was open (and not closed) in its structures and healthily seeded with doubt and uncertainty - unlike my own closed Calvinist Reformed Theology which became immediately transformative when removing Calvinism for Arminianism; and soon afterwards, led to Open and Relational Theology on my own; then, a year or so afterwards, stumbling across Process Theology which I had never heard of and needed several to examine and digest.
Hence, I came up through the ranks the hard way, both biblically and then philosophically, mucking about on my own much like the Apostle Paul when reorientating his Jewish theology with a Christ-filled Christology with very little or no help from his peers.
Hence my caution to fellow travellers along the difficult roads I had once climbed and descended solo yet was mercifully commissioned and led by the Spirit out of the dark pits I once was inhabiting. For without the Spirit, it would've been impossible. "Thank you, Lord."
It took nearly ten years to produce this formative website here, Relevancy22, showing my struggles while surrendering my deep fundamental past and later, spending the best of my years in conservative-evangelicalism, that I might find the God of love I had always believed in, and the Atoning / Resurrected Christ Jesus. Both of whom I now center the entirety of my theology around as Authors and Finishers of my faith, rather than some scripted dialogic system purporting truth and love yet betrayed by its own judgmental dogmas and socio-political actions.
Where I had supposed "the bible" was my center-point it can be no longer. Especially when considering this "bible" - that I had inherited, was taught in, trained in, and actively ministered from it for years - was but my faith's own interpretation of a faithful God and God's faithless creation. Over the past forty years (sic, the late 70s, early 80s, and onwards) the evangelical faith has definitely showed itself deficient in construct, outlook, and practicum when witnessing the church's own dissolution into a world of unloving dogmas and excluding fellowships.
At which point, being led here by the Spirit, I have joined other process theologians in aligning my own evangelical thoughts and teachings with the broader perspectives of process theology. In so doing I have joined many other process-centric institutions, organisations, religious and secular fellowships, schools and programs, which are likewise exploring the spirit-life of processual faith, science, community, and nature.
And like Elijah the Prophet (whose name I bear in my own middle name), I no longer find myself alone but am surrounded by a whole host of God's children likewise struggling with the integration of Christian biblical teachings and how they might more properly fit within the metaphilosophies of the Western-American and TransContinental-European traditions.
Ultimately, Process is its own thing, though sometimes claimed to be a combination of both the Western and Continental approaches. However, being its own thing is liken to any good scientific theory - such as Einstein's Relativity Theory - as it absorbs and subsumes all previous philosophic, theologic, and psychologic efforts under its own integrating (or integral) canopy once known by Whitehead as a "Philosophy of Organism" but now known as "Process Philosophy and Theology". A construct which easily, if not pervasively, reaches out globally to bring into itself all religio-philosophical outlooks.
This then would be the proper mark of an integrating/integral "Theory of Everything" (TOE) after thorpugh testing and dialogue. It's what it should do when withstanding the tests of time. And importantly for myself, and my Christian faith, one centered around God's love and God's Son Jesus, in its processual panentheistic forms.
Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” 1 Kgs 19:18, KJV
And so I write this to show both the close similarities - as well as the dissimilarities - with other similar, but non-pocess based, Christian and non-Christian approaches are as they seek to address the area of cosmotheology.
Here is some of what I found on the DTN site - some of which I liked and felt was very process-oriented... even as I later learned DTN to be a hodge-podge of eclectic ideas... which, to a process guy, is never ideal, nor wanted, if a integral theory is to be a good theory at all, it must be its own thing and not a collection of things.
If an Integral Theory of Everything (ITOE) is to be as it name claims then such a theory must be "Sufficient in itself. Efficient in its purviews and explanations. And able to evolve without losing its basis of origination."
Think quantum theories, or Einstein's equations, and you'll begin to understand why a good theory never loses its character while also positively-and-negatively spurring frenetically forward ever greater and expanding discoveries.
The Attitudes of a Process-Relational CosmoTheology
After reading this statement as a process guy it made me glad to see another Christian site working to the same ends as my own Christian Process community and that we are not alone in our efforts to reach across all spaces of life and faith towards discovering a greater holistic awareness, if not individual and communal forms of practices, which might take a fractured corporate Godhead of Father, Son and Spirit, along with its many schismatic churches, towards a uniting and healing multivariant faith body willing to dialog more closely with each other, including diverse global faith bodies, non-faith institutions and organisations, seeking a common goal of finding a centralizing foundation on which to live and commune in fellowship with one another and the nature around us in which we inhabit and have been consuming at a brutally horrific rate.
These are the spiritually essential, moral and ethical capacities which can-and-should-be-done between the peoples of the world, leaving within humanity's structure such vital organic systems as doubt and uncertainty so that in its very infrastructural foundations we as a process community have built into it a permanent DNA which grows and evolves with the understanding of the earth and cosmos at large.
Complexly, if not essentially, in the creation of God nothing ever ceases to be wholly defined or wholly isolated. All is relational. And in the relational all is connected by definitive design, purpose, structure, synergy, and teleology. If we espouse open, evolving, cosmotheological systems then in theory as well as in practice they should correspond with our own conscious experience of the everlasting with that of our everlasting CreatorGod-Redeemer.
All is connected. All is open. All certainty is uncertain. All avowed is to be held in glorified doubt and exploration. - R.E. Slater
The Structures of a Process-Relational CosmoTheology
Part of the attraction I have to process theology is the interconnectedness of our stories to the stories of others, the earth, and the cosmos; and from there back to every thing, and all things, to one another in correspondent ap/prehension, concrescence, formative actuality, and everlasting processual possibilities-occassions.
A process-based integral theory of cosmotheological modelling would include within it all current and previous efforts including the following:
- It would certainly include such areas of study as Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry whose emphasis was to offer a grand synthesis of everything that integrates scientific with religious cosmologies by identifying common universal elements (singularities) which are the foundation and structure of all created things.
- Ken Wilbur's East meets West psychodynamic modeling between cultures and religions (as explained further below)
- The Gaia hypothesis, also known as the Gaia theory, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
- And any and all studies related to psycho-spiritual consciousness in religious, synthetic, sociological, aural, and neural studies.
- Historical Origin stories of the earth and its people weaving each locality's narrative into the larger meta-narrative of the earth's history, and the earth's history with the story of the universe.
- Finally, as an integral story of mankind, to discover what each separate area of study may mean for the world's consciousness of itself and its communities. These would pertain to morals and ethics relating to all areas of mankind and nature such as ethno-religions, cultures, economic, and socio-political structures
The Principles of a Process-Relational CosmoTheology
Here are some corollary principles a process philosopher-and-theologian can well agree with from the Catholic perspective of a cosmotheology (I've taken the DTNr statement and have modified it a bit into process terms):
A proposed hypothetical cosmotheological model is to be in harmonic orchestration depicting a progressive integral cosmology such that:(a) it may bridge the age-old gap between science and religion;(b) strike a balance reconciling difference, diversity and individualism with a universal metanarrative in which our smaller stories fit and make sense;(c) may reveal how all things interconnect as one, naming the singularity with its unifying energy in the Omega Point;(d) may anticipate, forecast, and names the next stage (phylum) of psycho-spiritual evolution;(e) may provide a numinous icon/symbol that is at once novel, inclusive, archetypal, and conducive to a universal synthesis;(f) and may identify Spirit/Pneumena along organic lines, correlating the model as incarnational in nature while extracting from it helpful psychophysical terms.
R.E. Slater
May 19, 2022
*NOTE. The non-processed based study reference used here by the Catholic version of cosmotheology as laid out above was excerpted from a chapter sub-heading entitled “A Post-Modern Cosmotheology,” from Joseph C. Masterleo’s book, “The Ambient Christ, The Inside Story of God in Science, Scripture and Spirituality,” which utilizes the Judeo-Christian Scripture as a platform and portal to the proposed cosmic unified field which I am assuming correlated with Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry's earlier philosophic-theological research studies.
- R.E. Slater
The Ambient Christ: The Inside Story of God in Science, Scripture, and SpiritualityPublished in Paperback – September 29, 2020by Joseph C Masterleo (Author)There is a unified field in the cosmos that holds everything together, and every discipline is a portal to it. Science calls it a field of fundamental forces and elementary particles. Religion calls it God and accepts it by faith as an impenetrable mystery. How can their unbending perspectives be reconciled? In The Ambient Christ, the author proposes a novel paradigm that explains their complementarity as a seamless unity. This innovative model provides a new story for an ailing and divided planet in the twenty-first century, and a viable solution to the holy grail quest."There is something too narrow and missing in the gospel as it is presented to us. In spite of appearances, our age is more religious than ever; it only needs stronger meat" - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin."A religion, [either] old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." - Carl Sagan
ADDENDUM
My first blush with Ken Wilber proposals is located here in this article: Integral Philosophy & The Integral Left - Integrating Life, Nature & Politics which may help in understanding both the Deeptime Network organisation and Wilber's Eastern Oriental approach to his quasi-scientific Integral Theory which is dramatically different from Whiteheadian Integral Philosophy and Theology working with the academic sciences, psychotherapies, ethical and religious communities.
It is also where I began appreciating Matthew Segall for his work in this area as a skilled Whiteheadian process philosopher and (Jewish?) Theologian. Matthew currently heads the Cobb Institute's Science Advisory Committee for Scientific Cosmological Studies and Outreach.
Wilbur had made a large effort in integral modeling from an AQAL "interior v exterior + individual v group" psycho-spiritual transformative proposals:
- Integral theory is a meta-theory that attempts to integrate all human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that is able to accommodate the perspectives of all previous worldviews, including those that may appear to be in contradiction to one another.
- What does AQAL stand for? An acronym for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types,” this approach organizes for integral thinking, combining as it does the essential elements of the theory to represent the holistic nature of the concept.
- What is AQAL philosophy? Ken Wilber's AQAL, pronounced "ah-qwul", is the basic framework of Integral Theory. It suggests that all human knowledge and experience can be placed in a four-quadrant grid, along the axes of "interior-exterior" and "individual-collective".
- What is Ken Wilber's religion? In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber refers extensively to Plotinus' Neo-Platonic philosophy, which he sees as nondual. While Wilber has practised Buddhist meditation methods, he does not identify himself as a Buddhist.
As a process guy interested in integral philosophic-theological modeling Wilbur's approach further engaged me to (i) stay the course in process thought (ii) while also coming to recognize that approaches such as Wilbur's (or de Chardin or Berry's) could fit within process' integral theory of everything (PP/PT_ITOE) as non-processed based, synthetic approaches to cosmotheology.
Much like the indecipherable elephant whom the blinded, but wisest of their day, could not comprehend. Each suggesting the beast was one thing or another when limiting themselves to one area of the elephant.
So too is the study of a Postmodern Process Relational Cosmotheology when examined through the eyes of religionists, scientists, philosophers, and such like. The psychoanalyst Jung had his archetypal theories; Plato his substances and objects; Hegel could not compete with the Reductionists of his day; and Newton, like today's quantum academia, see only through the lenses of their preference.
However, what if Process Philosophy is the mythical elephant (which must be allowed to become some other evolved critter later). What if the many aspects of world knowledge was but looking at one aspect of God's creation at a specific socio-cultural era and geographic space but not enough of the elephant to gain a thorough glimpse?
Hence, I continue my own Whiteheadian studies in the direction of a Postmodern Process Relational CosmoTheology incorporating such elements as panrelational, panexistential, and panpsychic modeling states and systems into the areas of a Process Christianity utilizing Open and Relational Process Theology when expanding a God-centric cosmos which can easily incorporate within it the Standard (or Physical) Cosmology of the quantum sciences, along with any-and-all of the world's cosmological theories.
Below I have left several years worth of indexed references illustrating the vast differences of process studies to other non-process based religious and quasi-religious studies.
- R.E. Slater
RELATED PROCESS INDEXES
RECOMMENDED PROCESS TITLES
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Ken Wilbur's Studies in
Eastern Oriental Thought Meets
Western Psychodynamic Psychology
Integral Spirituality is being widely called the most important book on spirituality in our time.Applying his highly acclaimed integral approach, Ken Wilber formulates a theory of spirituality that honors the truths of modernity and postmodernity—including the revolutions in science and culture—while incorporating the essential insights of the great religions. He shows how spirituality today combines the enlightenment of the East, which excels at cultivating higher states of consciousness, with the enlightenment of the West, which offers developmental and psychodynamic psychology. Each contributes key components to a more integral spirituality.On the basis of this integral framework, a radically new role for the world’s religions is proposed. Because these religions have such a tremendous influence on the worldview of the majority of the earth’s population, they are in a privileged position to address some of the biggest conflicts we face. By adopting a more integral view, the great religions can act as facilitators of human development: from magic to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral—and to a global society that honors and includes all the stations of life along the way.