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

Sunday, June 15, 2025

A Processual Theology Proper, Part 3


Diagram by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

A Processual Theology Proper
PART 3

Sections 7-8

by R. E. Slater & ChatGPT


This post is a continuation of:

and


✦ Section 7: A Manifesto/Collective Declaration
for the Future of Faith

Ten Commitments for a Living, Processual Spirituality

This is not a creed nor do we write of a contract, but of a companion call and guide for all who wish to live in tune with the divine becoming of the universe. This call is for mystics and skeptics, pastors and poets, scientists and seekers - anyone whose heart beats with the rhythm of a cosmos unfinished and yet in the very act of being created by all that is within itself.

🌍 A New Theological Ethic: Ten Declarations

1. We affirm that God is relational, not remote.

God is not a distant monarch but the living presence within and beyond all things.
We encounter God not by escaping the world, but by participating in it.

2. We affirm that God’s power is persuasive, not coercive.

We reject theologies of divine violence or domination.
Love, not control, is the essence of divine strength.

3. We affirm that the future is open.

There is no fixed script. God works through freedom, possibility, and improvisation.
Each moment is sacred, because each moment co-creates the world.

4. We affirm that creation is alive and participatory.

The cosmos is not a dead machine but a network of becoming.
All things—from atoms to galaxies—respond to the divine lure toward value and beauty.

5. We affirm that Jesus reveals divine empathy, not divine wrath.

The cross is not a transaction of punishment, but the deepest expression of solidarity.
Resurrection is the renewal of relationship, not escape from the world.

6. We affirm that salvation is healing and transformation.

We are not rescued from creation, but invited to help renew it.
Redemption is not a moment; it is a movement toward deeper wholeness.

7. We affirm that justice means restoration, not retribution.

God’s justice does not seek to punish but to mend.
Reparative love is stronger than vengeance.

8. We affirm that divine knowledge/revelation is participatory, not totalitarian.

God knows all that is, and offers what could be - but does not impose what must be.
Divine knowledge is but revelation working salvation out.

9. We affirm that theology is provisional, poetic, and evolving.

No doctrine captures all truth.
But faith seeks understanding in humility, creativity, and love.

10. We affirm that hope is grounded in divine companionship.

Hope is not the certainty of outcome,
but the trust that God is with us in every process of becoming.

🕊 The Call Forward
a process poem

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT


We are not the last word,
but we are God's living words -
spoken into time
spoken into action
with freedom,
and trembling joy.
Let us listen, let us feel,
for the divine call in our hearts -
let us respond with courage
and co-create worlds into being,
worlds that sing
justice, tenderness, wonder.


Diagram by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

✨ Liturgical Affirmation
For community or private recitation

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

Leader:
We believe not in a God who stands above us,
but in a God who walks with us.

People:
We trust the God who feels, who listens, who responds.

Leader:
We believe not in fixed futures,
but in the divine call to co-create.

People:
We trust the lure of love that whispers in each moment.

Leader:
We believe not in rigid doctrines,
but in unfolding beauty.

People:
We walk the way of becoming,
with courage and grace.

All:
For God is not the end -
but the companion in all new beginnings.


🕊 Benediction: A Blessing for the Becoming

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT

May the God who dreams in spectra-color
bless your steps with surprise.

May the God who weeps beside you
fill your pain with presence.

May the God who calls stars by name
speak to the smallest seeds of hope in you.

And may you go forward
not in certainty but in wonder.

Not with every answer
but in deep trust and faith in God.

For the world is not yet finished
And neither are you.

Amen.


✦ Section 8: Afterword:
The God Who Becomes With Us

The Divine Presence in Every Moment of Becoming

This manifesto is not the end of theology. It is a beginning. It is a call to live with God not as an abstraction, but as a companion presence, unfolding with creation, with humanity, in real time.

In classical theology, God is often defined in terms of being: the Supreme Being, perfect and complete.

But in process theology, God is more than a fixed being - God is becoming. Not becoming better, but becoming with, in co-creatorship with creation.

God’s glory is not untouched or unfeeling transcendence. It is relational presence in every process of love, creativity, justice, and renewal.

🌿 Incarnation Reimagined

In Jesus, we do not see a divine exception.
We see a divine expression—of what God has always been doing:

  • Entering the world,

  • Suffering with it,

  • Healing it through love,

  • And rising not above creation, but through it.

Christ reveals a truth that has always been true:

God is the one who journeys with us, who suffers what we suffer, who lures all things toward life.

🌌 God in the Everyday

We need not wait for miracles to find the divine. The divine is everywhere about us making all things miraculous.

And upon each moment - each heartbeat, each breath, each choice - carries the pulse of the divine invitation to co-create in love, beauty and valuative truth.

God is not only in sanctuaries and Scriptures, but in:

  • A word of kindness exchanged in grief,

  • A gesture of resistance in the face of injustice,

  • A shared meal, a newborn’s cry, a dying breath.

God is not the God of thunder, but the God of whisper.
Not the unmoved mover, but the ever-moved presence.

🕊 The God Who Becomes With Us
a process poem

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT


God is not a God of rigid systems -
    or theological battlements.

God is a God of flowing rivers -
    of growing trees,
    of aching hearts,
    of new songs sung at dusk and again at dawn.

This is the God of process—
    Who is not behind us, pushing,
    nor ahead of us, pulling,
    but beside us,
    always becoming with, going with, present with.

We are not called to defend God
    but we are called to co-create with God.

We are not here to master theology
    but we are here to midwife beauty.

We are not saved by belief alone
   but we are saved in our response
    to lure of love again and again and again.

For the future of God is not settled
    it is still becoming... and so are we....


Chart by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT



Return to "A Processual Theology Proper, Part 1," Sections 1-3
or
Return to "A Processual Theology Proper, Part 2," Sections 4-6


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