Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Feb 23, 2024

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

Friday, February 23, 2024

Index - The History of Ancient Humanity

A mosaic of symbols of the 12 tribes of ancient Israel is displayed in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem, Israel, Dec. 29, 2022. BEATA ZAWRZEL/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

The history of ancient Israel and Judah begins in the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. The earliest known reference to "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation is in the Merneptah Stele, an inscription from ancient Egypt that dates to about 1208 BCE, but the people group may be older. - Wikipedia

THIS SITE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Below is a rough outline of the ancient historical cultures I hope to explore through this coming year. Within each categorical section there are large gaps yet to be completed. Many articles have already been completed and are linked while many others have yet to be written.

I began this project over a year ago beginning in the Fall of 2022 when asking the question, "What came before the book of Genesis?" Or, "What is the Evolutionary History of Man, Religion, and God Before It Became Legendary in the Hebrew Bible?"

These are not normal questions a Christian would ask... but I think we must ask these broad questions to understand how the Christian God we worship came to be with humanity's dynamic journey of self-discovery which began so many eons ago.

Which also means that this same Hebraic/Christian God we claim to know by our words and actions, art and outcomes, will continue to have a dynamic relationship with creation and humanity in the eons ahead. Do we then fixate on the God of the ancients as acclaimed? Or, are we allowed to modify or reform our existential journey against God's epistemological sooth-sayers by undoing so much bad theology with better, more humane, God-filled theology?

Let Us Build New Reformational Societies of Humanitarian Good Will

Jesus said, "By their works you shall know them." The Protestant Reformers thought the same when re-envisioning the Catholic Churches appraisement of the Hebraic and Christian bibles. But by the Reformers Christianly journey I am not so sure their legacy of reform has been helpful based on its bloody, oppressive history vouchsafing a God of oppressive duty and worship.

Perhaps then, we are due for another, more loving Spirit-filled Reformation than the Protestant one begun in the 1600's? If so, it must be more loving, kind, and respectful of other's beliefs and cultures, race and skin color. To be justly co-operative, and importantly, non-assimilating within polyplural settings.

This movement must also take into account what it would mean to build towards ecologically just and fair societies which are not indifferent to the requisite and necessary social justices required to be met within it's ecologically-centered civilizations.

Israel's Cultural Background Did Not Happen in a Vacuum

Let us begin by setting an arbitrary date of 2500 BC within the Babylonian Kingdom from whose Semitic influence it so deeply influenced Israel's early civil and religious history before being subsequently affected by the enslaving Egyptian and pagan Canaanite cultures.

During this time, as Israel grew to become an ancient kingdom it required the requisite amount of time to develop it's own national origin from it's humble tribal beginnings. One which could admit and administer civil and religious laws while transitioning from a polytheistic society to one acclaiming monotheistic values.

All this occurred over 1600 years beginning with Israel's ForeFather and Senior Patriarch, Abram/Abraham, through whom 12 tribes resulted, which tribes were later enslaved by Egypt, then escaped to wandered the many tractless wildernesses of the Levant giving tribal Israel time to organize itself under Moses' civil and religious laws (e.g., the 10 Commandments).

After 40 years Israel entered the land of Canaan to establish it's presence and a rudimentary form of monarchy of some years before splitting in two to form a pagan, polytheistic Northern Kingdom, in 900 BC from ten of it's tribes. And, a sacramental, monotheistic Southern Kingdom, in 850 BC from it's remaining two tribes, Judah and Benjamin.

We should also be aware that Israel collected it's oral traditions which we know as the narratives and laws from Old Testament texts: it's Torah, Writings, and Prophets. These oral traditions were gathered together between 700BC to 300BC when Israel's ten northern tribes were exiled from the Land by Assyria (between 732 - 722 BC); and later it's two southern tribes under Babylon's rule (exile dates: 598/597, 587, and 582 BC). When returning from exile in 539 BC at the largesse of Persia under Cyrus the Great, the Southern kingdom constructed a Second Temple out of the ruins of the former Solomaic Temple under Ezra's guidance in 537 BC.

Moreover, by Israel gaving attention to its religious history it completed it's Hebraic Bible, a Canon testifying to it's God YHWH. As such, (1a) parts of the Hebrew Bible first section, the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), was written beginning in the 10th century BC with (1b) the final redaction and canonization of the Torah most likely occuring during the Babylonian Exile (6th–5th century BCE). The rest of the Hebrew Bible in its (2) Writings and (3) Prophets was complete by 100 BC but not Canonized until at the Council of Jamnia sometime in the first century AD in response to Christianity.

The Violent History of the Church

In short, Israel has had a long history which Jewish-Christians recognized and placed alongside their own Christian Bible with the New Testament. Through the millenia the early church expanded globally and we now have a deep and concerning heritage to which triumph and terror have occurred since Christianity's earliest persecutions - first, at the hands of Israel's priests, and then at the hands of Rome.

Some years later, under Emperor Constatine in 312-313 AD, the fourth century church launched it's own state-assisted attacks upon pagan Europe and the Islamic Middle East. Then, through the centuries ahead, the church turned its attention to it's own membership and oppressed, tortured, and murdered fellow Catholics and Protestants alike forgetting it's own previous history of oppression and enslavement. Added to these inane acts of the Western church, countries across Europe and in America itself, experienced the Western Christian church's religious colonialization of African tribes; wars against Spain and Italy; and the decimation of the native tribes of America. This has been a significant part of the Christian church's legacy in sharing what was suppose to be the good news in Christ Jesus to the world.

Let Us Start Anew

And so, perhaps its time to end the church's ruinous campaigns of faith and worship upon the unfaithful and pagan and begin considering all men and women as beloved of God and requiring the utmost of respect and kindness. Christianity's many past oppressive pagan forms must end and a new era of Christian faith commence as a loving testimony to a loving - and not Warrior - Godhead.

So let's begin by looking at the history of humanity both inside and outside the bible ... of which Christians seem to know very little of God's earlier worlds of divine presence, sustainability, and blessing. Let's look beyond Israel's history to the more ancient histories of Semitic and non-Semitic human civilizations throughout the Fertile Crescent, the Levant, and all the way back into Egypt and East Africa where mankind (sic, homo sapiens) was first birthed 300,000 years ago.

R.E. Slater

February 23, 2024

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Index - The History of Ancient Humanity

by R.E. Slater

Table of Contents