Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology: Mar 28, 2025

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, March 28, 2025

The Incarnational Cosmic Christ, Part 1

The Incarnational Cosmic Christ

PART 1

by R.E. Slater

I am going to begin a concentrated discourse of process philosophy which must necessarily take us into a great many fields of study. After fifteen years of forging 1) a new path for Christianity and 2) for faithful Christians to explore-and-consider (see The Calf Path of an Open, Discerning Faith which I wrote in November of 2012) I believe it's time to double down and give even greater root to this new directional assignment encumbering my heart. Roots which are both philosophical and theological.

Incarnational

I titled this post here "The Incarnational Christ" which means to me that the God who became man, and lived as a man, within the world of his creation, has transformed God's Self from "what-ness" to "being-ness." Now perhaps my ontology is wrong and God has always been a Cosmic Being of some sort but where it concerns humanity, I can easily make the case that God has furthered God's Being-ness by God's transforming human incarnation into this world we inhabit. (As an aside, God's Being-ness has ever been... God's Incarnation is making this fact evident to humans here.)

Cosmic

By "Cosmic" I mean to assert that God as Christ was always existent and will always be existent. That as Creator, Christ must be as cosmic as Christ is Incarnational. That neither diminishes the other but significantly expands and expounds the other. If Christ is not Creator-God than Christ is less a cosmic Being than is understood.

Christ

Lastly, by "Christ" I mean "the Son of God" who is at the right hand of the Father and in fellowship with the Father and the Spirit. Though I prefer for simplicity's sake to think of God as One the bible and tradition seem to imply their is a tri-partness to God's Being... that of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In essence, this speaks to me of relationship, experience, and presence.

Process

Not inconsequentially then does process philosophy and theology insist on the same qualities of panrelationalism, panexperientialisim and panpsychism all bound up in one cosmic ontological presence. Thus my attraction to process thought as it correlates quite nicely with traditional Christianity - and, might I add, other interrelated religious touchstones (sic, interfaith commonalities)

Conclusion

And so, I believe I am going to settle in and think through how a post-structural, metamodern, radically processual Christian faith might live and breath underneath it's verbiage. When I look at a healthy field of grasses and wildflowers swaying together under a small breeze, seeing, smelling, feeling within it its greenery and colours, I assume there resides healthy, complex ecosystem of roots. But should I dig those roots up I could further explore what makes the field of grasses and wildflowers so beautiful in its expanse and vibrancy.

Here, I intend to look at my process faith root-and-all, small-and-large, heartbeat-and-body, soul-and-spirit, as an expression of the God I love in correlation with process philosophy and theology. Now for those readers who want an expositional bible study they will need to go elsewhere... perhaps in my earlier discussions over the years; but here, I intend to use philosophical dialogue in conjunction with theological ideas so that your and my Christian faith not wilt under the intemperate suns of human ideologies conflicting this same faith. Why?

Because my theological faith built on loving ethics and community needs a bit more depth in order to breathe. I need to test it out a bit more... or help it extend and expand a bit more... into societal thinking. This project then is my missional project to the world of inter-religious and Christian faith. My request is to pray for the Spirit's continued enlightenment to dissect, discern, direct, discover, and help determine a healthy expression of God's announcement in Christ:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". - John 3.16

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 28, 2025

"For God so loved the world...": This phrase highlights the profound and extensive love God has for humanity.

"...that he gave his only Son...": This emphasizes God's ultimate sacrifice, offering his Son, Jesus, as a means of salvation.

"...that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life": This outlines the consequence of faith in Jesus: eternal life, not death.