Processual Meaning in Motion:
Frege, Process and Developing
a Living Language
Part 3
Metamodern Theosophy:
Semantic Reinterpretation in Process Philosophy
by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT
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continue from Part 2
RES
How might process theosophy (discussed in Part 1) address classical Christian thought using Frege's semantics so that the hidden or the sublime might be heightened or expanded?
Chat GPT
This is a rich and profound question - inviting us to explore how process theosophy might use Frege’s semantic framework to reframe and deepen classic Christian thought, particularly in revealing the hidden and sublime meanings that traditional theology often flattens or misrepresents.
Let’s approach this in four layers:
🔹 1. Frege’s Semantic Triad and Theology
Recall Frege’s triad:
- Sign (Zeichen): The linguistic form (e.g., "God," "salvation," "resurrection")
- Sense (Sinn): The conceptual content or mode of presentation (e.g., “God as sovereign ruler” vs. “God as relational becoming”)
- Reference (Bedeutung): The real entity or truth the word points to (e.g., God, actual redemptive transformation, etc.)
In traditional theology:
- The sign is often treated as fixed and sacred.
- The sense is inherited dogmatically (creedal).
- The reference is presumed to be metaphysically static and absolute.
But this locks meaning into closed containers - mistaking orthodoxy’s sense for the fullness of divine reference.
🔹 2. Process Theosophy: The Recovery of the Sublime Sense
Process theosophy, especially grounded in Whiteheadian metaphysics, challenges this static approach. It posits:
- God is not a static object but an evolving relational reality - luring creation toward novelty, justice, beauty.
- Religious language is symbolic and unfolding, not final.
- Revelation is ongoing, not fixed and closed.
Thus, process theosophy decouples sign from rigid sense. It reopens theological signs (e.g., “glory,” “judgment,” “Christ”) to new, dynamic senses that more accurately resonate with the actual reference: a co-creative, persuasive divine reality which is always in process, evolving and becoming towards redemptive fullness.
➤ Frege’s model helps process thought reveal:
- That the traditional sense of Christian terms is often misaligned with their reference in lived, relational experience.
- That true sublimity - the divine lure: reality's unfolding beauty - has been trapped in stale or moralistic senses of words.
- That "misunderstood subliminals" are often the true depth behind the signs, long ignored by creedal literalism.
🔹 3. Bringing Forth the Hidden: Theopoetic Application
Let’s apply this through an example:
Word/Sign: Salvation
- Classical “Salvation” = Escape from hell; legal pardon God’s saving act in Christ
- Processual “Salvation” = Transformative participation in divine life; an ongoing relational becoming into divine harmony
Inplication:
- The sign is the same.
- The reference, God’s redemptive activity, is arguably the same.
- But the sense in process thought is far more sublime, hidden, evolving, and more existentially true than the juridical framework of classic theology.
🔹 4. Theosophic Implication: From Public Misunderstanding to Sublime Realization
In this light, processual theosophy becomes a hermeneutics of uncovering:
- It re-signifies theological language so it aligns with a living divine reference.
- It invites mystagogy, not dogma - guiding people into the unfolding mystery, rather than enclosing them in fixed dogmatic senses.
- It restores the sublime not as supernatural spectacle, but as emerging/emergent presence in becoming.
This re-enchantment isn’t irrational... it’s supra-rational, poetic, relational, open. It takes what was publicly known (the sign), confronts the classically-and-Platonically misaligned sense, and reinterprets the meaning processually to reflect the truer reference: That God is a God ever in transformatively loving process with-and-alongside the world.
✨ Summary in Fregean Terms:
Process theology reclaims theologically "closed" signs from their fossilized senses, realigns them with the living reference of God-and-creation's divine becoming, thus revealing the hidden sublimity previously veiled by millennia of dogmatic misuse.
What the Sign Forgot
A Fregean Theosophy in Verse
by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5
> The word was sung - salvation true,
a symbolic sound all faithful knew
It rang in pews, in solemn creeds,
but missed divinity's life in whisper needs.
> For sense was shaped in courts and kings,
of wrath and rules and mortal things;
That forged heavy chains from fear and guilt,
miscalling it love O' wretched thing.
> Yet still the sign had deeper delves and dreams,
which meaning flowed 'neath all living things;
As justice danced in mercy’s fire,
yet a loving God transfixed all souls' desire.
Not iron gates, but gardens wide and flowing,
nor fiery wrath, but bounteous rivers deep and true;
A heavenly process filled with hearts renewing,
not saved from hell but saved into creation's mystery.
Having traced salvation's hidden frame,
from broken words to living impress;
Though symboled sign yet remains -
it's sense expands Love's divining reference.
The Sign that Grew Wings
A Fregean Theosophy in Verse
by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT-5
cold syllables beneath Almighty's throne.
But time has turned the world askew -
breaking meaning from it's granite script.
The sense now sings in layered tones,
not fixed, but enfolding like winged flames.
In consuming reference, unchained, unbound,
not fixed, but enfolding like winged flames.
In consuming reference, unchained, unbound,
across lively acts met within loving hands.
Let us then behold divine's signs grow wings,
to flutter and soar beyond the breath of men.
For only when we dare re-learn, re-vision,
can God be truly beheld salvation's meaning.
to flutter and soar beyond the breath of men.
For only when we dare re-learn, re-vision,
can God be truly beheld salvation's meaning.
Finale
What began with Frege’s precision ends in metamodern resonance. Meaning, once seen as static correspondence, becomes living coherence in motion. Through processual theosophy, theology returns to life - not as defense of doctrine, but as participatory artistry within divine enfolding. In Fregian Process, signs evolve, senses deepen, and references emerge within deepening relationships.
This is theology reborn:not in the preservation of hardened meaning - but in its renewal.Not in the defense of fixed truths - but within the maturation of becoming.In Frege’s logic, meaning was the bridge between word and world.In processual theosophy, meaning is the world becoming lively word.
- R.E. Slater & ChatGPT
