Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, becoming more fully within the continuing life of creation. - 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

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

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

A Quick Note...

Update

October 14, 2026

I continue to expand and refine both the Reality & Metaphysics (R&M) project series and the introductory Prelude to the Prehistory of the Bible series. I temporarily paused R&M after Essay 45 to explore how our developing philosophy of relational reality might correspond with Earth's evolutionary history and, more particularly, humanity's emergence as a conscious, symbolic, and eventually religious species. I had little doubt that evolutionary history would be compatible with Generative Relational Realism (GRR), but I wanted to investigate how humanity's developing consciousness, cultural memory, mythology, and religious traditions eventually produced the worlds of belief we know today.

This inquiry has become more extensive than anticipated. It has led me into the prehistoric origins of religious imagination, the civilizations of the ancient Near East, and the cultural and historical ancestry of biblical religion. More importantly, it has raised a question I wish to explore before returning to R&M: 

Can a contemporary Christian Relational Theology remain intellectually responsible when grounded in an independently investigated relational reality that is informed by evolutionary science, archaeology, and historical-critical scholarship?

The Prehistory Prelude is therefore becoming an extended investigation and provisional testing ground for relational theology - but NOT a substitute for the larger philosophical and theological work still ahead in the R&M series.

To date, essay 4A has been published; essays 4B and 4C are completed but need review before being released to publication. Moreover, I am in the process of developing an essay 5, have yet to begin essays 6 and 7, and have completed essay 8 which will require a significant update because of essay 5.

Here is a brief outline of the four remaining essays in our Prehistory of the Bible - A Prelude to Relational Faith series.

Essay 5 - From Mythology to Living Religion
How Inherited Religious Worlds Become Living Systems of Belief

Examines how religious traditions develop through successive generations of cultural memory, mythology, reinterpretation, institutionalization, and communal practice. Particular attention is given to how ancient religious inheritances became the living belief systems of Judaism and Christianity. The essay investigates these developments through naturalistic historical explanations without presupposing divine activity.

Essay 6 - Can Faith Survive What We Have Learned?
The Bible, Historical Understanding, and Faith After Literalism

Explores what happens to inherited Christian faith when evolutionary science, archaeology, comparative religion, and historical-critical biblical scholarship challenge traditional interpretations of Scripture. It distinguishes the loss of theological certainty from the loss of faith itself and considers whether Christianity can retain God, Christ, Scripture, and hope while relinquishing historically inadequate assumptions.

Essay 7 - God in the Long Becoming of Humanity
A Christian Relational Theology of Creation, Christ, and the Evolving Cosmos

Offers a preliminary reconstruction of Christian theology within an evolving relational reality. It examines God's presence, creation, revelation, divine action, Jesus Christ, suffering, salvation, and Christian participation through the interpretive framework of relational theology. It also asks what distinguishes divine reality from nature and what warrants a Christian interpretation of a universe that can be understood without invoking God.

Essay 8 - When Religion Replaces Philosophy
The Relationship between Philosophy and Religion

Investigates how religious theology frequently serves as an implicit philosophy of reality for believers. It examines Christianity's philosophical inheritance, the dangers of subordinating philosophical inquiry to religious authority, and the independence of ERR/GRR from theological commitments. It concludes by establishing the responsibilities and goals of a comprehensive relational theology capable of serving both Christian faith and independent philosophical inquiry.

Together, these essays move through four related questions:

Essay 5: How did inherited religious interpretations become living systems of belief?

Essay 6: What happens to Christian faith when we recover the human history of those beliefs?

Essay 7: Can a contemporary relational theology offer an intellectually responsible interpretation of God and Christian faith?

Essay 8: How can relational theology serve as a comprehensive Christian worldview without compromising the independence of relational philosophy nor that of the Christian faith?

This completes the intended progression of the Prelude before we return to the larger Reality & Metaphysics project.


R.E. Slater



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