And as I have shown through each of the above articles we have choices to make whether to continue with these kinds of religious, irreligious, and non-religious stories about God and the bible or whether we are ready to "grow up and eat spiritual meat":
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly–mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? I Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV
Though the Apostle Paul would apply his words to the Jewish-Gentile churches he was planting and discipling I have personally given up instructing evangelical churches how to reorient their faith and have rather been speaking to exvangelicals, the none-and-dones of the church, and radicalized ex-Christians or non-Christians, to reconsider how to read all doctrines of the Christian faith (or, any religious faith) with God's love.
I do not debate God's existence. To believe God is, or is not, will always be a faith matter. My own assumptions begin with a theistic application that God is... before next debating the kind of God whom/which God is. In doing so, I've come to the conclusion I must have a process-based God rather than an evangelical-God or a folkloric traditional God, or a God of trickery, hate, wrath, or inaction. Hence, this kind of God who sings within my being is unbound by human imagination, actively present in this world, and continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world from death and hatred.
Looking around ourselves we all can admit that if we become active participants with God in continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world around us... even church worlds, faith worlds, and non-faith worlds... our efforts would vastly assist God in God's activity of reclamation and reconstruction.
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Hebrews 5:12-6:2. NIV
Secondly, this process God whom I follow is a God of love at all times. Never hate. Never wrath. Never hellish, harmful, or toxic. Again, my past Christian background was one which supported a dipolar God of love and wrath, but the God whom I chose to see and follow is a monopole God of love, not wrath. So again, over these past many years of rewriting the story of God and who God is I have also rewritten the stories of the bible and the kinds of theologies we entertain from those stories... stories of love, perseverance, failure, doom and recovery, and so forth. But never have I doubted that God is not loving through the stories we read or the stories of our own life. It has always been the conflictions within our own hearts of which God we wish to think upon.
Mainly, the evangelical story of who God is in our own lives as opposed to the kind of God we think God is to the world is one of fickleness, fictional fabulism, folkloric tradition, and unhealthy beliefs. It has led to the kind of religious turbulence both church and world have found themselves within... that of an evolving process world of shifting faith stories, morals, ethics, migrations, settlement, despair and hope. However, I was more happy when seeing God as a God of love within my story of failure, loss, and tragedy, than as a God who blames me for outcomes, heaps on guilt upon my broken heart, or disappears when I needed God most.
And so, my second intent when writing through all these years has been to write a Christian theology and faith which is centered in the love of God and not in the theology of the church. To do this, I had to ironically remove the bible from the center of my faith and put the Author of the bible there instead. I facetiously tell people that the bible is no longer my faith center but that God's love is this center as expressed by Jesus. Of course, it's a slight-of-hand-trick as well as circular-logic but one in which I wish to be centered in an evolving bible speaking to God's love. If my beliefs, theologies and religious practices can get this right then I have the possibility of hope that the kind of process world we live upon might make more sense to our faith.
And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, II Timothy 2:24-25. NIV
At the last, I have provided many perspectives and many stories and many teachings how a reorientation to a loving, process-based, faith and circumspection of life might assist in breaking, upsetting, disturbing, and revolutionizing the Christian faith. One which might get us back into the game and win it by emphasizing a loving theology which is weak (Paul: "I am strong when I am weak"), recenters science via process philosophy, is balanced out by panpsychic process mysticism which throws out insipid, unpalatable, mystery statements refusing science in favor of folkloric tales and beliefs and new ageism.
Jesus said tha he came to disrupt, overthrow, remove, and burn down all religious faith structures which prevent his disciples from seeing the God of love around them (as surely Pariseeism had done). In many ways I and other process exvangelicals, nones-and-dones, and radicalists both Christian, agnostic, atheistic, and so forth, are doing the same. Of these categories I and process theists are but one voice - but I find this voice to be the more helpful to my faith journey.
A journey where I could have easily lapsed into these other categories but now no longer need to. I simply have found a spirit voice within my being that helps me co-exist in a healthier way against the other voices which would have led me to their own conclusions guided by their own spirit constructions. I like mine own version of Christian faith and so, I write of it sharing my journey of discovery. It could not have been done without God blowing up my former faith and reconstitutionalizing it's traditional baptistic and conservative evangelic centers.
Since doing the hard work of reconstruction, and learning how to continually apply this work into new and novel settings, I can confidently state that God is alive and well and lovingly present in all that we do should we listen to the simplest of voices to love as Jesus loved. Whenever teaching the bible, teach it from the vantage point of a God love and not from a God of wrath and vengeance as I have explained in the past three articles. Whether living through life's sadness and horror, if possible, rise from the ashes like the phoenix rocs of old knowing God is there, having done all that could be done in a wicked world of sin and death.
The Christian faith is not a faith of escapism from the world but a living present faith re-engaging with the world - even religiously unhealthy worlds of Christian faiths. And, at all times, by being led by a God of love. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments vouchsafed this faith time and again though many turned from the prophet's speech and sought God on their own terms. Terms which left them less wise, less gracious, angry and broken.
I suspect the Christian faith can do better today than it has recently done under trumpian maga-ism and Q'anon foolishness... even as those surviving progressive Christians are now doing rising over the broken shards of their past evangelical faith. But even these faithful need a newer theology to which I propose a process-based theology currently being described by Tom Oord (who is my friend and whom I support) as an Open and Relational Theology. Yet, by adding one word to this phrase, and then giving that one word depth, and this contemporary Christian phrase will be fully energized and engaged with today's societies.
The word? Open and Relational Process Theology, ala Whiteheadian process philosophy and the process theology which results from this metaphysic, ontology and ethic. To wit, I will now turn over the discussion to my friend, Jay McDaniel, in part II of this three part discussion ending with John Cobb's Whireheadian video.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
September 7, 2024
Acts 17New International VersionIn Thessalonica17 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[a] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.In Berea10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.In Athens16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.
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Twenty Key Ideas
in the Process Worldview
by Jay McDaniel
1. Process: The universe is an ongoing process of development and change, never quite the same from moment to moment. Every entity in the universe is best understood as a process of becoming that emerges through its interactions with others. The beings of the world are becomings.
2. Interconnectedness: The universe as a whole is a seamless web of interconnected events, none of which can be completely separated from the others. Everything is connected to everything else and contained in everything else. As Buddhists put it, the universe is a network of inter-being.
3. Continuous Creativity: The universe exhibits a continuous creativity on the basis of which new events come into existence over time which did not exist beforehand. This continuous creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. Everywhere we look we see it. Even God is an expression of Creativity. Even as God creates, God is also continuously created.
4. Nature as Alive: The natural world has value in itself and all living beings are worthy of respect and care. Rocks and trees, hills and rivers are not simply facts in the world; they are also acts of self-realization. The whole of nature is alive with value. We humans dwell within, not apart from, the Ten Thousand Things. We, too, have value.
5. Ethics: Humans find their fulfillment in living in harmony with the earth and compassionately with each other. The ethical life lies in living with respect and care for other people and the larger community of life. Justice is fidelity to the bonds of relationship. A just society is also a free and peaceful society. It is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying - with no one left behind.
6. Novelty: Humans find their fulfillment in being open to new ideas, insights, and experiences that may have no parallel in the past. Even as we learn from the past, we must be open to the future. God is present in the world, among other ways, through novel possibilities. Human happiness is found, not only in wisdom and compassion, but also in creativity.
7. Thinking and Feeling: The human mind is not limited to reasoning but also includes feeling, intuiting, imagining; all of these activities can work together toward understanding. Even reasoning is a form of feeling: that is, feeling the presence of ideas and responding to them. There are many forms of wisdom: mathematical, spatial, verbal, kinesthetic, empathic, logical, and spiritual.
8. Relational Selfhood: Human beings are not skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin, but persons-in-community whose interactions with others are partly definitive of their own internal existence. We depend for our existence on friends, family, and mentors; on food and clothing and shelter; on cultural traditions and the natural world. The communitarians are right: there is no "self" apart from connections with others. The individualists are right, too. Each person is unique, deserving of respect and care. Other animals deserve respect and care, too.
9. Complementary Thinking: The process way leans toward both-and thinking, not either-or thinking. The rational life consists not only of identifying facts and appealing to evidence, but taking apparent conflicting ideas and showing how they can be woven into wholes, with each side contributing to the other. In Whitehead’s thought these wholes are called contrasts. To be "reasonable" is to be empirical but also imaginative: exploring new ideas and seeing how they might fit together, complementing one another.
10. Theory and Practice: Theory affects practice and practice affects theory; a dichotomy between the two is false. What people do affects how they think and how they think affects what they do. Learning can occur from body to mind: that is, by doing things; and not simply from mind to body.
11. The Primacy of Persuasion over Coercion: There are two kinds of power – coercive power and persuasive power – and the latter is to be preferred over the former. Coercive power is the power of force and violence; persuasive power is the power of invitation and moral example.
12. Relational Power: This is the power that is experienced when people dwell in mutually enhancing relations, such that both are “empowered” through their relations with one another. In international relations, this would be the kind of empowerment that occurs when governments enter into trade relations that are mutually beneficial and serve the wider society; in parenting, this would be the power that parents and children enjoy when, even amid a hierarchical relationship, there is respect on both sides and the relationship strengthens parents and children.
13. The Primacy of Particularity: There is a difference between abstract ideas that are abstracted from concrete events in the world, and the events themselves. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness lies in confusing the abstractions with the concrete events and focusing more on the abstract than the particular.
14. Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy: Human experience is not restricted to acting on things or actively interpreting a passive world. It begins by a conscious and unconscious receiving of events into life and being causally affected or influenced by what is received. This occurs through the mediation of the body but can also occur through a reception of the moods and feelings of other people (and animals).
15. Concern for the Vulnerable: Humans are gathered together in a web of felt connections, such that they share in one another’s sufferings and are responsible to one another. Humans can share feelings and be affected by one another’s feelings in a spirit of mutual sympathy. The measure of a society does not lie in questions of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, but in how it treats those whom Jesus called "the least of these" -- the neglected, the powerless, the marginalized, the otherwise forgotten.
16. Evil: “Evil” is a name for debilitating suffering from which humans and other living beings suffer, and also for the missed potential from which they suffer. Evil is powerful and real; it is not merely the absence of good. “Harm” is a name for activities, undertaken by human beings, which inflict such suffering on others and themselves, and which cut off their potential. Evil can be structural as well as personal. Systems -- not simply people -- can be conduits for harm.
17. Education as a Lifelong Process: Human life is itself a journey from birth (and perhaps before) to death (and perhaps after) and the journey is itself a process of character development over time. Formal education in the classroom is a context to facilitate the process, but the process continues throughout a lifetime. Education requires romance, precision, and generalization. Learning is best when people want to learn.
18. Religion and Science: Religion and Science are both human activities, evolving over time, which can be attuned to the depths of reality. Science focuses on forms of energy which are subject to replicable experiments and which can be rendered into mathematical terms; religion begins with awe at the beauty of the universe, awakens to the interconnections of things, and helps people discover the norms which are part of the very make-up of the universe itself.
19. God: The universe unfolds within a larger life – a love supreme – who is continuously present within each actuality as a lure toward wholeness relevant to the situation at hand. In human life we experience this reality as an inner calling toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity. Whenever we see these three realities in human life we see the presence of this love, thus named or not. This love is the Soul of the universe and we are small but included in its life not unlike the way in which embryos dwell within a womb, or fish swim within an ocean, or stars travel throught the sky. This Soul can be addressed in many ways, and one of the most important words for addressing the Soul is "God." The stars and galaxies are the body of God and any forms of life which exist on other planets are enfolded in the life of God, as is life on earth. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. As God beckons human beings toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity, God does not know the outcome of the beckoning in advance, because the future does not exist to be known. But God is steadfast in love; a friend to the friendless; and a source of inner peace. God can be conceived as "father" or "mother" or "lover" or "friend." God is love.
20. Faith: Faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One.
Explanation:
Process thinking is an attitude toward life emphasizing respect and care for the community of life. It is concerned with the well-being of individuals and also with the common good of the world, understood as a community of communities of communities. It sees the world as a process of becoming and the universe as a vast network of inter-becomings. It sees each living being on our planet as worthy of respect and care.
People influenced by process thinking seek to live lightly on the earth and gently with others, sensitive to the interconnectedness of all things and delighted by the differences. They believe that there are many ways of knowing the world -- verbal, mathematical, aesthetic, empathic, bodily, and practical - and that education should foster creativity and compassion as well as literacy.
Process thinkers belong to many different cultures and live in many different regions of the world: Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America, and Oceania. They include teenagers, parents, grandparents, store-clerks, accountants, farmers, musicians, artists, and philosophers.
Many of the scholars in the movement are influenced by the perspective of the late philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead. His thinking embodies the leading edge of the intellectual side of process thinking. Nevertheless, a mastery of his ideas is not necessary to be a process thinker. Ultimately process thinking is an attitude and outlook on life, and a way of interacting with the world. It is not so much a rigidly-defined worldview as it is a way of feeling the presence of the world and responding with creativity and compassion.
The tradition of process thinking can be compared to a growing and vibrant tree, with blossoms yet to unfold. The roots of the tree are the many ideas developed by Whitehead in his mature philosophy. They were articulated most systematically in his book Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. The trunk consists of more general ideas which have been developed by subsequent thinkers from different cultures, adding creativity of their own. These general ideas flow from Whitehead's philosophy, but are less technical in tone. The branches consist of the many ways in which these ideas are being applied to daily life and community development. The branches include applications to a wide array of topics, ranging from art and music to education and ecology.
Much of this website -- Open Horizons - is devoted to the branches and trunk. Of course, some people will be interested in the roots. For those interested in gaining knowledge of the roots, we have created a free course of short videos which provides an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's organic philosophy and serves as a guiding companion to Whitehead's seminal work, Process and Reality. These twenty six-minute videos are offered below. They can be viewed in sequence or in parts, depending on your interests. If you would like to get started on this short course to better understand the roots of process thinking, go to What is Process Thought? The ideas above represent the twenty key ideas in the trunk.
Jay's PowerPoint Summation:
* * * * * * *
John Cobb has been very instrumental to my and Jay's process faith.
Here is an introduction to what it is and how it should be regarded from
Claremont College and it's Graduate School of Theological Studies.
- re slater
John Cobb - An Introductory Introduction: 01
