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

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Sheri D. Kling - Process & Faith, Oct 2024

 

Amazon link

Recently I had open heart surgery and have been recovering these past several weeks. In lieu of my occasional essays I will provide readers with additional process resources which may be read here and then linked over to process websites for future readings and study along with my own here.

Below is the inter-religious process site, Process & Faith, tended by Sheri Kling, a process scholar and theologian. She has chosen to interlink the world's major religions to Whitehead's process philosophy and thereby bring a point of common ground between process Christianity (mainly Protestantism, but some Catholicism and Eastern Christian sects) with process Islam, process Buddhism, process Judaism, and so forth.

Too, Chad Bahl is a Facebook friend of mine whose latest work is being promoted this month on the Process & Faith website. Hence, I've included Chad's book and Youtube video herein.

As I recover I urge exploration of the sites I will share in the week(s) ahead. Mainly Jay McDaniel's writings which he has been airing out on Facebook. For my own ambition, I am thinking of relearning Whitehead's Process Philosophy and Cobb's Process Theology through Andrew Davis' insights which I'll share in time.

Further, I hope to begin piecing together how we should begin learning to read the bible  in a process-based evangelic which I'll call a process of post-evangelic, metamodern, and process theological cultural "eyes" and understanding.

Since I was raised as a fundamental Baptist and my training is in Reformed theology and evangelical Calvinism, recent "maga-shunning" ex-vangelicals might find comfort in my site as I explore pushing out the boundaries of my former faith via process theology. If I were to rewrite this site and my journey again, I think I might do it by way of writing process commentaries on the books of the bible just like theologians of old did via their own background and training. Perhaps in a year or so I might start this as I've been contemplating writing a commentary on the book of Colossians lately. We'll see.

Otherwise, I wish to tie together my many past hundreds of articles previous developed on the theme of Evolution and God with a final series on The Evolution of God and Religion. Much of it is charted out... I just have to put it all together.

As always, Relevancy22 tells of mine own journey out of traditional evangelic Calvinism through evangelical Arminianism into Open and Relational theology and finally, into Open and Relational PROCESS theology. Both of which Chad Bahl and Thomas Oord do assent by way of seeding process thought into evangelicalism by way of Oord's own version of Open and Relational thought reform.

Myself, I'm just going to state process theology outright - whether it's accepted by my past fellowship or not. I feel that the future of Christianity is dependent on process thought if it is to survive outside of the mythic and existential-subjectivism that it currently has lapsed into.

Christian processualism expands the Christian faith; recenters it into God's love and Christ Jesus alone (without the typical doctrainnaires of the Institutionalized Church); and expands the entire study of systematic theology from the Godhead through to Eternity.

Process Christianity proposes an Open Faith, and Open Future, and an Open Godhead, as I've explained over the years. It's now up to my readers to grasp the subject, learn the subject, and learn to speak it better than I have in the years ahead if it is to find any footing in the Christian faith.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater
October 24, 2024
Faith & Feeling: Process Pop-Up


88 views Oct 17, 2024 #theology #spirituality #faith

For both Schleiermacher and Whitehead, God is not “up there somewhere.” Rather, God is most readily found by looking inward, to where God is experienced.

In theological circles, German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) may be best known for his text, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, his effort to defend religion from Enlightenment skeptics. He’s also been a subject of interest to process thinkers like Philip Clayton, Thandeka, and, more recently, Chad Bahl. In his doctoral research, Chad has been putting Schleirmacher’s thoughts on faith and feeling into conversation with the work of Alfred North Whitehead.

He has found that “In both process thought and Schleiermacher’s philosophy, the essence of existence is not lifeless matter or dogmatic precepts. Rather, it is lived experience. In this lived experience, we are interconnected both as human beings and in fellowship with the Divine.”

Schleiermacher is known for talking about faith as a feeling of “absolute dependence.” Resonant with Whitehead’s thinking about God’s aims for every actual event, Chad describes this as a “natural result of being in tune with our deepest intuitions. It arises from our recognition of the presence and purpose of God in our lives.” As we cultivate our awareness of God—through spiritual practices like contemplation—this feeling naturally arises as a kind of “God-consciousness” that is “developed as we experience community with others, fellowship with the Divine, interaction with nature, the Gospel story, and much more.”

While each of us may experience the Divine differently, it is this “personal perception, (not reason, dogma, or scientific proof), which serves as the centering principle for faith.” According to Chad, attuning to this interior faith and feeling is crucial to human life. “We become fully actualized human beings when we realize fellowship with the Divine in our experiences of both Creator and creation.”

About the Speaker:

Chad Bahl, DThM candidate at Northwind Theological Seminary, specializes in the study of Open and Relational Theology. Bahl is the author of God Unbound: An Evangelical Reconsiders Tradition in Search of Truth, the author/editor of Deconstructing Hell: Open and Relational Responses to the Doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment, and, most recently, the author of Mornings with Schleiermacher: A Devotional Inspired by the Father of Modern Theology.

Process & Faith is a multi-faith network for relational spirituality and the common good. 


Join the Process & Faith community: https://processandfaith.org

 

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