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

Monday, June 20, 2022

Process Shorts...



PROCESS SHORTS
[brackets are mine - r.e. slater]


R.E. Slater - The unchanging God is always changing!

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Tripp Fuller - Strangely, Christian "orthodoxy" followed a particular philosophy far more than the Bible's [collection of philosophies - re slater]. 

Orthodoxy believed what was really good was what a thing was in itself. That relation(ship)s were limitations on God. That a "proper" God had no relations.

But think [about it] for a moment what God could be before God had created anything when God was all alone by Godself.

  • God could not love, for there was nothing to love.
  • God could not know, for there was nothing to know.
  • God could not cause anything, for there would be no effect.
  • Indeed, it is hard to think of God existing at all.

[In contrast], the greater the cosmos which God influences, loves, and knows, the greater God is. It seems rather obvious that a Creator who does not create anything is not much of a Creator.

Moreover, sometimes people don't notice that if they attribute all power to God, they similarly deny any power to God [in other respects to His deity and ontologic Self-history - re slater].

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R.E. Slater - My definition of Scripture is a  collection of narratives imperfectly describing a loving God. 

This living God-narrative has been with us through the centuries. It's latest rendition being expressed - as it has always been - through all of mankinds beliefs, religions, activities, deeds, structures, art, and such like. 

Some are great. Some are not great. But like its Author, "Spiritos inspiration" was never left within a static, dead book (the bible) but through creation's living incarnational-narratives mimicking Jesus imperfectly, but perfectly, as producing a living, viral salvation.

The writers and commentators of God are God's people regardless of whether they are mentioned in the bible or reside apart from it's page. 

As emissaries of God's love, or of Christ Jesus as the God who serves selflessly, sacrificially, in forgiveness, mercy and grace, this is my broadest definition of the "bible" written upon Creation's hearts of spirit-flesh.

The "written" bible is but a beginning and aspect of the Living God who walks amongst us through His Creation.

Below, Karl carries it more fully as inspirational expressions bedrocked in a relationship between Creator-"C"reation (I like to capitalize the creational "C" as it gives majesty to God's work, rather than detract from it, though it is us who do the subtraction).

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Karl Streeter - What if we “see” scripture as a “living organism with history and potential? Could it be scripture’s authority lies on whether we engage her with a “I-Thou” relationship instead of a “I-It” relationship? Maybe the deification or demonization comes from the “I-It” relationship? No transformation or inspiration comes from a “I-It” relationship. The evolution of “love your neighbors” to “love your enemies” is the inspiration to move from a “I-It” relationship with others to a transformational relationship of “I-Thou”. Could it be that “you shall not make for yourself an idol” is a warning to engage all things as “living” and not reduce them to an “IT”? True transformation or becoming “anew”(“reborn”) comes from “changing our minds” (repent) from our relationship with reality as an “IT” rather to a relationship as “Thou”. As Process teaches us that we are all in relationship with all things, it is love/life/creativity/freedom which inspires us to encounter those relationship as “otherness” and not in “idolization”.

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R.E. Slater - Another gem from Karl Streeter speaking to a relational theology pregnant in all its forms throughout our lives and earth's living creational history. His G-d is expressed in a dissatisfied form with the Christianized G-O-D.... and I don't blame him. Though my preference is to spell God as "God" due to my heritage, if I'm dissatisfied with it's expression of G-O-D I do it by stating my disaffection (as you've noticed).

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Karl Streeter - Some say that the physical is the only reality that exists. If you cannot measure it, see it, touch it or even taste it, it does not exist. Then there are those who say the physical and the spiritual both exist, but the spiritual is the only thing that really matters. The physical is just a shell for the spiritual.

What if the spiritual can be described as love, creativity, freedom, responsibility, potential, and luring/calling and the physical can be described as the other. Then, Incarnation is the spiritual echoing the physical. G-d “spoke”, then there was creation or said differently, creation is the echo of G-d, love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, creativity, freedom, etc. Incarnation is not about two realities coming together but a relationship of the “two”. The spiritual and physical are partners in all reality. The spiritual does not create the physical, they are in co-relationship with each other. If G-d is relationship and one cannot be in relationship with oneself, then there was not a time when one existed without the other. One might say that incarnation is the covenant of G-d and creation/other.

Are atonement and incarnation related? What if atonement is the mutual cooperation between G-d and "other" or incarnation? Could it be that Jesus’ faithfulness saves us by emulating the mutual cooperation between the spiritual and physical even unto death. Although death cannot “kill” the mutual cooperation of incarnation, it is because of the mutuality of the relationship incarnation re-lives continuously.