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

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Writing A Theology (of Love) for a Nuclear Age (of Brokenness)

 
 

Writing a Theology (of Love) for a
Nuclear Age (of Brokenness)

by R.E. Slater

I. Type

The scientific article below speaks to "surviving" nuclear holocausts (but not necessarily surviving from radiation fallout across wide biotic landscapes).

It brings to mind a discussion I was hoping to have years ago which never occurred. It's topic was creating "A Theology for a Nuclear Age".

Such a theology wasn't meant for survival but for confronting how we might interact with one another in fairness, equity and empathy.
One element for a new theology of love is that of expressing "Virtue," a quality reflecting a "beneficial act of helps to another."

If we failed in these basic acts of humane virtue then we have failed in our purposes to live with each other - and with planet earth! - in significant and influential ways.

II. ArcheType

Which brings us to the idea of processual living expressed through the idea of an interactively, highly connective processual theology.

By "process" is meant the idea of connectivity and relationality in resultant acts of cause-and-effect within the broader universe which is highly interactive in its responsiveness of parts to whole and whole to parts.

The idea of process is how creation works whether we recognize it or not. It's idea may be found embedded across all religions espousing, but not necessarily becoming, processual faiths sharing loving acts of kindness to one another.

ArcheType - a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology. 
Processual theologies - are highly interactive. Descriptive terms like panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic convey that aspect of God to creation and creation with itself. It's how the world works underlaid by generative value given and received between things.

In Christ's crucifixion we see a recurring processual archetype displayed throughout the Being and Essence of the Author of Creation whose creation bears the imprint of that creator-God's generative Self. A Loving Presence which gives of Self and restores; which forgives and shows grace at all times (irrespective of what many say); and which fixes and heals all who come for restoration.

The Christian theme can be found in all of the world's religions and within very Earth itself. The Cross of Christianity illustrates this generative (sic, redemptive) motif of processual restoration across the plains and archetypes of relational interactions multiplied infinitely in every direction.

Such a (loving) processual theology is truer in form to Jesus-living and faith than the church's current theologies of dominionism, exploitation, and oppression of all those unlike itself. These types of "non-processual" theologies overlook the consequences they generate by religious acts of sin and evil. In comparison, a processual theology of love must look at our failures, repent from them, and work towards the redemption of all things (people, nature, human structures, attitudes, and ideologies) from states of relational brokenness to states of relational healing, unity, and care-giving.

In this, theologies of love, especially processual theologies of love, repent of their religious practices of Christian secularism, legalism, oppression, and dominionism, by seeking to restore and regenerate all living relationships between ourselves, and with each other, and even the Earth itself. Such processual theologies grant hope and purpose when built on foundations of processual love that are, and are becoming, more fully expressive, connective, and valuative.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
February 26, 2023




Sheltering miles from a nuclear blast
many not be enough to survive unless
you know where to hide...

"...Indoor locations to avoid are the windows, the corridors, and the doors," said co-author Loannis William Kokkinakis.

"The best location is in the half of the building farthest from the blast, in a room with no windows. But, "even in the front room facing the explosion, one can be safe from the high airspeeds if positioned at the corners of the wall facing the blast," Kokkinakis told Insider...."



* * * * * * * *

Listening to Duran I hear several themes running at once through his lyrics. Beyond the relational theme comes the themes for humanity, for planet Earth, for the wishes to survive beyond the collapse of our dreams, hopes, and purposes all gone to ruin. Most of all I hear a theology of love which has fallen out of vogue for a theology of mere survival. This may be true but I believe to survive we must hope... and to hope is to know that the God of Love has created a creation with a deep longing for love and connection, atoning redemption and restoration. It is this God who came to know the loss of loved ones, of dreams, of a failed message as the incarnate Jesus who teaches us how to sing again in the midst of loss. Let us sing. Let us bind one another's wounds. And most of all, let us learn to care and love again in an ordinary world filled with pain and loss. 
- r.e. slater 

Duran Duran - Ordinary World (lyrics)


Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV, and the radio
Still I can't escape the ghost of you.

What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is the life that I recognize?
Gone away.

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.

Passion or coincidence
Once prompted you to say
"Pride will tear us both apart"
Well, now pride's gone out the window
Cross the rooftops
Run away
Left me in the vacuum of my heart.

What is happening to me?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is my friend when I need you most?
Gone away.

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.

Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Fear today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here besides the news
Of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk.

And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.

Every one
Is my world (I will learn to survive)
Any one
Is my world (I will learn to survive)
Any one
Is my world



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article link


Description
The possibility of a nuclear holocaust has brought humankind into a radically new, unprecedented, and unanticipated religious situation. Gordon D. Kaufman offers a cogent and original analysis of this predicament, outlining specific proposals for reconceiving the central concerns and symbols of Christian faith. He begins with an account of a visit to Peace Park in the rebuilt city of Hiroshima. Reflecting upon this experience, Kaufman foresees that further use of nuclear weapons will result not in rebuilding but in annihilation of the human enterprise.
About the Author

Gordon D. Kaufman is Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of twelve books, including In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology.