Index - Time & Temporal Becoming <-- collation of all time articles fr 2020-2026Index - Prehistory of the Bible <-- Essays 1+2 are nearly completed(timeline: from the birth of humanity to the Bible)Index - Relation Between Christianity & Philosophy <-- Our next series after the R&M seriesIndex - Historical Development of Early Christianity <-- next series after prehistory series(timeline: 160 BC - 160 AD)
The Historical Development of Early Christianity (Introduction) <-- first essay partially completedJESUS - Index - Historical Development of Christology <-- completed but unpublished series indexJESUS - From Jewish Expectation to Christian Confession <-- completed but unpublished first essay
My surprising discovery was that contemporary Christianity sorely needed a renewed philosophical foundation upon which it might rest. I was searching not merely for another addition to the layered and sometimes conflicting philosophical inheritance Christianity has accumulated across two millennia, but for a holistic, cohesive, and contemporary philosophical theology from which I might think, write, and respond.
After examining traditions within Western Analytic and Continental philosophy, I encountered A. N. Whitehead’s process philosophy and its later development into process theology by succeeding process theologians. At which point my doctrinal foundations, ideas, terminology, concepts, and patterns of thought all required reconsideration. After completing last year’s project series on the Evolution of Worship and Religion, I decided to pause and establish a clearer understanding of process philosophy so that I might eventually write a better process theology.
I began that work in January 2026. It eventually yielded the Reality & Cosmology series and, immediately after its completion, its companion series, Reality & Metaphysics, which will be more than twice the length of its predecessor. I had intended neither series, nor had I imagined developing them to their present extent. I had simply asked the question, What is reality? Finding no easy answer - even among my friends who joked and took the question as pointless - I thence used process philosophy as my starting point and began from there.
Eventually, process reality gave way to relational reality. Process has remained indispensable because reality becomes processually, but relation itself became more fundamental than process because nothing becomes alone. From this surprising development emerged Embodied Relational Reality, Open and Relational Process Metaphysics of Becoming, and finally Generative Relational Realism. Together, these provide the philosophical groundwork from which I hope to develop a more comprehensive philosophical theology: a relational theology.
Because relational reality emphasizes interdependence, participation, love, responsibility, and ethical consequence, it may also help nurture more compassionate church practices, more cooperative social relationships, and greater respect among people who believe differently. A relational philosophy must remain adaptive without relinquishing its central insights. It must include those of faith, those of no faith, and those who remain uncertain between belief and unbelief, because reality itself includes all creatures, great and small.
To that end, the next several project series will carry relational reality into the highways and byways of Christian thought. They will challenge the same beliefs I had to confront within my own life, while attempting to do so without destroying faith or demeaning those who remain within its inherited forms. My hope is to offer a more gracious understanding of God, a more truthful faith, a more historically grounded understanding of Jesus, and a more loving vision of the church than some of the forms and doctrines I once learned and taught.
These projects are therefore not isolated undertakings. They belong to one continuing movement: from reality to metaphysics, from metaphysics to interpretation, from interpretation to theology, and from theology to ethics and participation. The studies of time, biblical prehistory, Christianity and philosophy, early Christianity, Christology, and Sunday reflections each approach this relational movement from a different direction and perspective. Together, I hope they will show how relational philosophy and theology may provide an integrative foundation for Christian faith and our wider social relationships.
I do not expect this work to eliminate uncertainty or answer every question. Its purpose is to create room for an intellectually responsible and spiritually vital Christian faith: a faith that does not deny science, fear history, resist scholarship, or require the world to be other than it is; a faith willing to relinquish inherited certainty without relinquishing God; a faith willing to reinterpret Christian confession within relational reality without explaining away Christ Jesus; and a faith willing to participate more fully in the continuing generation of love, justice, healing, reconciliation, creativity, and hope.
This is where my work now stands and where the next stages of the journey begin....
Thank you for following with me.
Blessings,
R.E. Slater
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