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

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Rewriting God: Updating Theological Language, Part 3

 


Rewriting God:
Updating Theological Language
PART 3

From Essence to Event:
Rethinking Theology in a Processual Age

by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT


In producing parts 1 and 2, I had considered several general and academic titles showing the extensiveness of the subject matter at hand that could be written about. They are:


New Theological Language
  • Rewriting God: The Case for Updating Theological Language (this was Part 1)
  • Beyond Substance: Process Theology and the Renewal of Christian Doctrine
  • Process and Presence: A Contemporary Language for God
  • Becoming Divine: The Evolution of Theological Metaphysics
  • God in Process: Moving Beyond Hellenistic Ontologies
  • Relational Reality: Rethinking Doctrine through Process Thought (today's Part 2)
  • From Static to Dynamic: A New Vocabulary for God
  • Process over Plato: Reforming the Language of the Church
  • Theology in Motion: Updating the Language of God, Christ, and Creation
Redescribing the Trinity
  • The Trinity in Motion: A Processual Reimagining of Divine Relationality
  • Christology Expressed in Processual Terms
  • Incarnating Process: Jesus Beyond Essence and Experiencing Becoming
  • Doctrinal Language Focus
  • Old Words, New Worlds: Translating Doctrine for a Relational Cross & Cosmos
  • The Failure of Substance: Why Theology Needs a New Metaphysic
  • Semantic Resurrection: Redeeming Doctrinal Language through Process
Creative & Poetic Genre Titles
  • The Grammar of God: Speaking the Divine in a Changing World
  • Theology on the Move: Language, Love, and Becoming
  • A Lexicon of Living Faith: From Static Terms to Dynamic Truths
  • Verbs of God: A Process Lexicon for a Relational Theology (this was an earlier article)
  • Words in the Wind: Rethinking Doctrines for a World in Process

Consequently, each theological category is a story in itself reflecting the expansiveness of 21st century postmodern/metamodern theological language.

Now let's proceed to a general outline of these categories showing the possibilities for reimagining God, Scripture, Jesus, and Church along with doctrinal terms like Trinity, Incarnation, Divinity, Atonement, Salvation, Redemption, and even Eschatology.

Because of modern societies complexities and the great age of historic, academic scholarship, theology no longer is a straight path as it seemed to be in the church's early years. Rather, theology has become an eclectic hodgepodge of constructions, suppositions, ideations, reformulations, denominationalisms, sectarian thought, and applications.

When leaving evangelical theology I was not content to journey forward in my Christian faith as a past-evangelical... I needed a new theology that was more open to academic scholarship, more progressive, and more freeing. And one that led out by doubt and uncertainty so that other avenues could be explored, investigated, and/or developed. This I finally found in process theology though I knew nothing of it when I started.

And in hindsight, having left before Trumpian evangelicalism had become a thing (me: 2009/11 v trumpisim: 2015/16), I am glad I left my former faith's once bannered halls of propositional truths claimed as timeless and everlasting... whose outcome has been shown in the spiritual bankruptcy of trumpian supremacy... and not in the love of an everlasting God founded in the observable witness, works, and love of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and, in Jesus' own terms of himself, the Son of Man, remade in God's image.

Ten years later, in 2025, evangelical trumpism has evidently not repented of the evil it is doing to the oppressed and unloved in America - nor of the harm and evil it is doing across the world in Ukraine (Putin's kind of Christian Orthodoxy) - nor has it repented of the destruction Israel has done to the Palestinian people across the Gaza region - nor in America's trade wars with the world evoked in mistrust, suspicion, one-sided accusations and indictments.

This kind of Christianity is the kind to flee from, shun, be rid of, burn up, and cast away. It is hateful, unhelpful, unattractive, and isolating. This is not how Jesus lived in the world and it is not how the gospel of Christ is to reach out into the world. It is of the devil, dressed in sheep's clothing, and altogether heinous.

Statedly, it seems that evangelicals have been paying lip service to God over the decades and not dedicating in their hearts truly to God nor to Jesus as they said they were. Their prayer and repentance rally in Washington D.C. in 2015 was a lie enunciated before the world by their words and actions in trumpian hate.

Sadly, the evangelical religion of most of my life has betrayed it's real self as bigoted, discriminatory, and bent on returning to the imperial religion of its day - even if it means following the devil himself with his many corrupt and lawless trumpian minions. To all this I say, Good Riddance.

Here is a brief review of how process theology rethinks the deep and rich history of the Christian church over the many millennia...



From Essence to Event: Rethinking Theology for a Processual Age

Chapter 1: The Crisis of Theological Language

Surveys the loss of intelligibility in classical doctrine. Shows how metaphysical assumptions—drawn from a Hellenistic worldview—limit theology’s relevance today. Introduces process philosophy as a way forward.

  • Why our metaphysical assumptions matter

  • Misunderstood doctrines: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement

  • Overview of language stagnation in Christian theology

Chapter 2: Hellenistic Metaphysics in Christian Doctrine

Traces historical roots of terms like ousia, hypostasis, and logos. Shows their use in the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian definitions. Critiques the static and hierarchical cosmology behind timeless, impassible, omnipotent portrayals of God.

  • Substance, form, and essence: Ousia and hypostasis

  • Timelessness and immutability in Greek thought

  • Plato, Aristotle, and the Church Fathers

Chapter 3: Modern Metaphysics and the Rise of Process Thought

Presents Whitehead's alternative vision: reality as becoming, not being. Explains actual entities, concrescence, and relational power. Frames process theology as metaphysically richer and more ethically viable.
  • Alfred North Whitehead and relational metaphysics

  • Process philosophy and theology: core concepts

  • Actual entities, concrescence, prehension, and God’s two natures

Chapter 4: The Trinity in Process Perspective

Reinterprets the Trinity not as three substances in one essence but as threefold relationality in the becoming of divine love. Highlights dynamic interrelation and mutual indwelling as evolving forms of divine expression.
  • From substance unity to relational flow

  • Dynamic mutuality of the divine persons

  • Reinterpreting perichoresis and divine diversity

Chapter 5: Christology and the Incarnation Reimagined

Affirms Jesus as the ideal embodiment of divine intention. Refutes metaphysical dualism of God inserted into flesh. Incarnation becomes the fullest moment of divine-human synergy.
  • Jesus as the ideal response to divine aim

  • Incarnation as processual, not metaphysical insertion

  • Christ's divinity: ontological vs. participatory models

Chapter 6: Creation, Time, and Providence

Argues for a co-eternal God-world relationship. Rejects creation ex nihilo and affirms deep temporality. God knows all that is actual and all that is possible, responding in real-time to creation’s unfolding.
  • Co-creative becoming: no ex nihilo, no determinism

  • God as temporal yet everlasting

  • Deep time, open future, and divine knowledge

Chapter 7: Atonement and the Power of Persuasion

Replaces legal satisfaction models with an image of God who redeems through persuasive, suffering love. Salvation is relational repair, not juridical balancing.
  • A critique of penal substitutionary models

  • Suffering love, divine solidarity, and healing justice

  • Salvation as creative transformation over legal rectification

Chapter 8: Scripture as Processual Witness

Views the Bible as a collection of evolving experiences of divine presence. Sacred not because it is inerrant, but because it captures humanity’s dynamic relationship with God.
  • The Bible as evolving testimony, not static revelation

  • Inspiration, error, and the divine-human partnership

  • Narrative truth vs. metaphysical absolutism

Chapter 9: The Afterlife and Eschatology in Process

Rejects binary heaven/hell constructs. Resurrection becomes transformation into divine memory and renewed value intensity. Eschatology is unfolding participation, not final catastrophe.
  • Eternal life as ongoing becoming

  • Memory, transformation, and the resurrection of meaning

  • New creation as emergence, not cataclysm

Chapter 10: A New Lexicon for Faith

Proposes replacements for outdated metaphysical terms, beginning with “essence.” In classical theology, essence (ousia) implies a fixed, timeless substance shared among divine persons. In process theology, this is replaced with the language of actual occasions—events of experience that participate in God’s unfolding. God’s character is not located in an essence but in the faithful continuity of divine intention expressed through the dynamic responsiveness of the world. The new lexicon offers liturgical, pastoral, and doctrinal tools to replace static concepts with processual ones.
  • Suggested replacements for classical terms

  • Examples of sermons, doctrines, and liturgy updated

  • Toward a relational grammar of theology

Conclusion: A Faith Worth Speaking Again

Summarizes how process theology revitalizes Christian speech. Encourages theology grounded in love, relationality, and hope.
  • Pastoral implications

  • A spirituality of response, not control

  • Theology as living conversation


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