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, February 12, 2024

Exploring the Spirit Origins of Eden, Part I



Exploring the Spirit Origins of Eden
Part I

by R.E. Slater

Genesis 2:8-9 NIV

8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.


A Process-based Exposition

In the bible the Garden of Eden was created by God for humanity (= man). Broadly interpreted, Eden itself bespeaks pleasure, abundance, nourishment (= pleasant, good, life). Within it was a place of temptation (= tree of knowledge of good and evil) to which humanity eventually failed. In 2:15 humanity was called to cultivate and care for Eden's environs.

Essentially, humanity, like nature itself, was given identity, purpose, meaning, community, and structure in which to build community.

That is, man was neither flora nor fauna... man was different from the animals and plants. This does not mean that there was no evolution but simply, the idea was not part of man's psyche.

Further, man's purpose was to care for things. Nourish, cultivate, grow, protect his surroundings... and by assumption, since God is loving, in a loving, redeeming, salvific manner.

As to man's meaning, it was uncovered through man's relations and actions with other humans as well as with nature. This is the idea of a processual creation evolving under humanity's loving care and nourishment. If humanity treated one another unlovingly there would be consequences. Similarly when communities and individuals gave loving thought, acceptance, liberty, and respect to one another. 

Eden then was a mythic place in the Hebrew mindset of national thrival given by God for their benefit. We might call such a place a Utopia or Nirvana or even Camelot. It was an ideal place generated under ideal conditions when agency or freedom was used aright as God intended.

Moreover, in God's image came the ability to live kindly and thoughtfully with one another. However, as time and event, history and narrative have shown, the agency given to nature and to mankind of God's Self was the temptation we could not conquer. In fact, agency is uncontrollable, willful, and wise unto itself. God's greatest gift to creation was also it's greatest downfall.

Not surprisingly, when we use our agency unlovingly we thereby will shut ourselves out from the creaturely-like heaven God provided through God's Expression of God's Self as will as lose our identity, purpose, meaning, community and the structures around which all these elements might occur and thrive.

Finally, God provided sustenance and salvation to creation knowing that divine agency given in love and not by divine fiat would fail. Firstly, God is love and all that God does is in love. Secondly, God does not "order" things in the Protestant sense of ordering but in love persuades, urges, nudges creation forwards towards goodness and love. Still God's immanent interaction with creation understood that agency, like Pandora's Box, was too great a gift to be beheld in. Hence, when removing ourselves from our identity in God we remove ourselves from ourselves.

As in the cosmos, so too in creation and in the human soul, there is no there there without God's presence. As creation was ever in existance (creatio continua as versus the Protestant teaching of creatio ex nihilo) the universe was a hot thermic blob until God "came into relationship with it" to give to the universe it's "being" whereupon it might "become." Similarly with creation and humanity.

Our being is found in God and in becoming more of who we are we may only "become" in yielding to God's ever-present presence. We are not alone, nor does God leave us alone. We are ever in the heart of God who nourishes and provides and protects as God can in an agency-filled world (sic, Arminianism v Calvinism; and Arminianism's updated form known as Open Theology and Relational Theology brought together).

Salvation then becomes known as creation in acknowledged, abiding presence with God (it cannot be otherwise but requires acknowledgement, which Protestantism defines as "faith" in various convoluted descriptions). And further by salvation comes divine help to act in one's agency not perfectly but redemptively.

This means that in the grand scheme of Eden is bourne the narratival concepts of Israel's Creation Story of salvation and redemption. Centuries later the Jewish religion found this narrative centered into the person and divinity of Jesus, known as Christ the Savior, Immanuel who comes incarnately, the sacrificial Lamb of God, and High Priest of creation and humanity's salvation.

And with salvation comes the work - not of necessity but of identity - to redeem all around us. Not by monastic escapism, nor by religious legalism in vain attempts to turn rags to holiness, but by abiding in God's acknowledged presence (= faith) and doing the works of divine relationalism (= works of love).

When redeemed, the redeem then redeem. Tradition may call this "The Roman's Road" or the "Gospel of Salvation" or the "Four Spiritual Laws." But salvific redemption is no more than learning to love and to be love. Not to add to our salvation or to wear brighter robes of white than those around us... but because in our soul we must give the cup or cold water, lose the shirt off our back, and aide and assist those lost to a world of destruction and ruin.

Whether ministers, priest, worker bees, community leaders, or moms and dads... we, who wear the relationship of God's presence within, about, or  around us, are urged forward in our daily lives by the Loving Spirit of God (I prefer this as versus the standard ascription of "Holy Spirit of God" as I wish to underline not legalism but kindness and goodness).

We will fail. This is the way of humility. We will act unlovingly. This is the way of restoring blown relationship as they can be restored. We will withdraw from some elements in our lives which create toxic need, dependence, our enablement within us be these drugs, alcohol, sex addictions, or people. In themselves these are not sin. But in our misuse or abuse of such elements, including those unhealthy to our faith walk to love, they may require abandonment.

And this, in a nutshell is the process theology and story of the Garden of Eden where being is acknowledged and becoming is the goal. How? Through relationships, experience and sensitivity to the presence of God. (Aka, process and processual event is panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic, but not in a weird way, but in a lovingly constructive way). Without even there can be no becoming; and without relationship back to God our being-ness is confused and muddled. Like the cosmic process around is ever in a tumult to become so we ourselves as spirit beings boundless to time but held within it's cosmic grip.

My next post will focus on the geographic origins of Eden,

Peace,

R.E. Slater
February 12, 2024

 

I am working on a Westernized description of Whitehead's process philosophy and theology. However, it is a pervasive concept as old as the world itself and in the East, such as in China, the religion of Buddhism also has this center of being-ness and becoming-ness. I wish then to use it as a common ground of understanding  with Asia and to build upon it Christ and His Salvation known. - re slater

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Source  - click here

1) The Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10-14)

God did not create a garden but ‘planted’ one. But note, the garden is not Eden. The garden was in in the eastern section of Eden (towards the rising sun). Eden was not itself a garden but a fairly large district. The Hebrew word ‘Eden’ means pleasure or delicacy. If Eden was pleasurable, the garden must have been exquisite. Where are those people who talk about the Old Testament God being fierce?! God has never changed from His goodness.

We are surprised at the space taken to describe the rivers. Only one verse is used to describe man’s creation (2:7), but five are used to describe the river. There is a hidden message here.

One river flowed out from Eden. Either it was a spring that came from the ground or a tall mountain stream that flowed down to the garden. Once the river reached the center of the garden, it divided itself into what would become four huge rivers. This would necessitate a huge garden. The names of some of the rivers are familiar to us; others are not. We suspect they are the same but necessary.

  • River #1 was Pishon: flows around Havilah where there is good gold, bedllium and onyx stone.
  • River #2 was Gihon: Flows around Cush (Ethiopia)
  • River #3 was Tigris: Flows east of Assyria
  • River #4 was Euphrates.

There are two Chinese characters for garden. One describes the garden above with its four rivers. The other describes the garden’s occupants.

Chinese radical for enclosure.

Enclosure

The enclosure has a center from where the river flowed and divided into four rivers.

Chinese character for garden or field.

Garden, Field

This Chinese word for garden or field describes what the garden was like. The Hebrew word for garden comes from the word to 'enclose' or 'protect.'

Chinese radical for enclosure.

Enclosure

Chinese indicating ground.

Dirt

Chinese character for mouth, person

Mouth, breath

Two people

Chinese radical for 2 people.(Note: the right one comes from the side).
bracket

Chinese character for garden.

Garden

A second Chinese word for garden describes who lived there. Only two people.

God spoke and formed man from the ground. Eve, the second person, came from the side.


So perhaps the whole of Eden was in a lofty place, but the garden was at a lower plateau where the rivers would gain more momentum as they flowed on out of Eden to the other parts of the world. Because of the identity of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, we suppose this land was near the present day rivers. The whole land of Eden seemed central and all the known world was centered around it. We see one river flowing from God’s new paradise.

The river stood for the blessing that came from God and would bring enriching provisions to the world. One could easily see how the Garden would seem like the throne of the world subjected to a higher throne in heaven. This thought of God’s divine blessing flowing to earth from His above throne is very common in scripture (see Psalm 65:9-13).

And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, (Revelation 22:1).

Chinese description of Eden



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