Tools to Deconstruct and Construct a Religious Faith (Part II)
Our undertaking in Essays 7A and 7B began with a question arising from the critical investigations of our preceding essays:
If inherited Christian beliefs must be reconsidered in light of contemporary science, historical scholarship, philosophical inquiry, and humanity's long religious history, what kind of Christian theology might responsibly emerge from that reconsideration?
We have approached this question not by abandoning Christian faith, nor by attempting to restore the theological certainties that our investigations have called into question. Rather, we have sought to reconstruct Christianity through its central confession that God is love, asking what follows when divine love becomes the governing character of God's being, purposes, power, and relationship with creation.
From this beginning, we have reconsidered divine holiness, sovereignty, judgment, and power through the character of noncoercive love. Creation has been understood not as a finished arrangement governed by an exhaustively predetermined divine plan, but as an open, relational, and continuously becoming reality. Within our Christian panentheistic interpretation, God accompanies this unfolding creation through loving presence, persuasion, and responsiveness, while creation contributes its own developing experiences and possibilities to the relational life of God.
This understanding also invites a different account of revelation. Rather than confining divine communication to extraordinary historical events, specially authorized texts, or exclusive religious institutions, we have proposed that God's loving presence continually communicates throughout creation. Scripture remains foundational to Christian faith as the historically developing testimony of religious communities within their understanding of the spiritual, while Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit retain their distinctive significance within centuries of developing Christian confession.
Yet the church cannot claim exclusive possession of divine communication, nor can biblical inspiration exempt religious interpretations from historical criticism, moral examination, or correction. Indeed, the wisdom required for faithful discernment may sometimes emerge more clearly from those outside Christianity's institutional and doctrinal boundaries than from those who presume to possess religious certainty within its institutions and communities.
In Essay 7B, our attention turned toward the distinctive theological confessions of Christianity itself. We have reconsidered incarnation while retaining the Christian confession that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully divine and fully human. Within our relational theology, incarnation is understood not as God's arrival from a separate supernatural realm, but as the distinctive embodiment of God's own self-expression within a creation already accompanied/enveloped/embraced by divine presence.
The Trinity has likewise been approached as Christianity's confession concerning the relational richness of divine life, while preserving the meaningful distinctions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without assuming that inherited metaphysical formulations exhaust the reality they seek to describe.
Likewise, the cross, resurrection, salvation, and reconciliation have all been reoriented through noncoercive divine love rather than through the necessity of coercive power, punishment, or supernatural intervention. The cross confronts humanity with the destructive consequences of violence while bearing Christian testimony to divine solidarity and self-giving love. Resurrection remains a substantive Christian confession of hope whose ultimate ontological meaning cannot simply be established by historical investigation or relational philosophy. Rather, we accept and assert that salvation and reconciliation become divine expressions of healing, transformation, and renewed participation in relationships of love.
These theological proposals must necessarily lead toward Christian practice and participation in the divine graces of God. If God is love, Christian faith cannot be measured solely through doctrinal agreement, institutional authority, or the preservation of inherited religious traditions. Its convictions must become visible through compassion, justice, humility, reconciliation, responsible care for creation, and the protection of those vulnerable to suffering and exploitation.
Nor does divine love guarantee that every desirable possibility will be realized. Within an open and becoming world, suffering remains real, freedom consequential, and the future genuinely unfinished. Christian hope therefore does not require believing that every tragedy belongs to a hidden divine plan, but that it rests instead upon the confession that God's love remains faithful amid creation's uncertainties, continuously inviting renewed possibilities for relationship, healing, and responsible participation.
Throughout this relational reconstruction, we have maintained a necessary distinction between relational philosophy and historically acclaimed Christian theology. Our philosophical investigations through Embodied Relational Reality and Generative Relational Realism remain independent accounts of reality, open to criticism and development without requiring Christian theological affirmation. Our resulting relational Christian theology is a further, distinctly confessional, interpretation of reality, developed through Christianity's own historical inheritance, scriptural testimony, and continuing theological reflection rather than apart from it. What Christianity proclaims itself to be we have examined and expressed relational concern and interpretation.
Statedly, neither philosophy nor theology must surrender its integrity to the other.
We have therefore not attempted to demonstrate God's existence through relational metaphysics, nor to establish Christian doctrine as the necessary conclusion of scientific or historical investigation. We have sought instead to develop a relationally constructive Christian understanding of divine reality that remains intellectually responsible, historically attentive, philosophically coherent, and ethically accountable. The resulting theology is neither complete nor immune from further reconsideration. Indeed, its commitment to relational becoming requires that our understanding of God and Christian faith remain open to continuing discovery, interpretation, and correction.
The tensions acknowledged at the beginning of Essay 7B have therefore not disappeared, nor should we expect them to. They arise when Christianity's inherited theological explanations encounter contemporary understandings of reality that were unavailable to earlier generations of Christian believers. Such tensions
i) need not require the abandonment of Christian faith,
ii) nor should they be resolved by dismissing scientific knowledge, historical scholarship, or philosophical inquiry.
iii) Rather, they invite Christians to distinguish the convictions they confess from the historically developing explanations through which those convictions have been understood.
Our invitation to Christian readers is therefore not to surrender their faith to contemporary societal reality, but also to reconsider their understanding of faith in conversation with the societal reality they inhabit.
This requires both intellectual honesty and theological courage: the willingness to preserve what remains meaningful within Christian confession while reconsidering, revising, or relinquishing explanations that can no longer be responsibly sustained.
Such reconsideration need not diminish Christianity's distinctive character. However, it may instead allow Christian faith to become more attentive to the world, more accountable to its own confession that God is love, and more responsive to the continuing possibilities of relational existence.
A relational Christian faith is therefore not a possession of final certainty, but a continuing participation in the possibilities of divine love within a world whose becoming remains unfinished.
Looking Ahead - Essay Eight
Having developed this theological proposal, one final question remains for our Prehistory of the Bible Prelude before concluding its introduction.
Can relational Christian theology serve as a sufficiently comprehensive worldview through which Christians may understand reality, creation, divine presence, humanity, history, ethics, and hope without compromising either the independence of relational philosophy or the integrity of Christian faith?
This question will guide our concluding investigation:
Essay Eight - Relational Theology and the Christian Worldview
Can Relational Theology Serve as a Comprehensive Christian Worldview Without Compromising the Independence of Relational Philosophy or Christian Faith?
Our final essay will therefore move beyond the reconstruction of individual Christian doctrines toward examining their integration, coherence, limitations, and practical significance within contemporary Christian understanding. It will also consider how Christianity's historically developing doctrines have accumulated into their own theological ontology and metaphysics, shaped through biblical interpretation, religious experience, philosophical inheritance, and centuries of ecclesiastical reflection.
Our constructive relational approach proceeds differently from generationally inherited Christian theological formation. Rather than beginning with inherited Christian doctrines as the foundational explanations of reality, we had first investigated reality through independent philosophical inquiry, subsequently bringing our relational understanding of existence into dialogue with a Christian faith whose historical theological development had incorporated era-specific philosophical assumptions into its doctrinal understanding of reality. Essay 8 will examine the significance of this methodological distinction, including the tensions that arise when inherited Christian theological explanations encounter a relational understanding of reality.
The purpose of this final investigation of inherited religious faith is not to establish the superiority or finality of our philosophical constructions, nor to diminish the distinctive confessions of Christianity. Rather, it is to consider whether a relationally reconstructed Christian theology can retain its confessional integrity while also offering a coherent, historically responsible, and intellectually credible theological interpretation of existence grounded in independent relational philosophy.
Ultimately, the purpose of constructive approach to relational theology is not merely to develop more adequate explanations of religious belief. It is to consider whether those explanations may sustain a faithful, humane, intellectually responsible, and life-giving participation in the world we actually inhabit.
And if God is a relational God of love, then that participation must continually return us to the generatively developing relationships through which love is received, expressed, and made meaningful within the becoming of creation.
Allison, Dale C., Jr. The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement. Translated by A. G. Hebert, SPCK, 1931.
Barton, John. A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths. Viking, 2019.
Borg, Marcus J. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally. HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
Cobb, John B., Jr. A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead. Westminster Press, 1965.
Cobb, John B., Jr. Christ in a Pluralistic Age. Westminster Press, 1975.
Cobb, John B., Jr., and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Westminster Press, 1976.
Dunn, James D. G. Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. 2nd ed., SCM Press, 1989.
Dunn, James D. G. Jesus Remembered. Eerdmans, 2003.
Enns, Peter. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Baker Academic, 2005.
Hartshorne, Charles. The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God. Yale University Press, 1948.
Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. Crossroad, 1992.
Keller, Catherine. The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. Routledge, 2003.
Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. SCM Press, 1974.
Oord, Thomas Jay. The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence. IVP Academic, 2015.
Oord, Thomas Jay. God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils. SacraSage Press, 2019.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology. Crossroad, 1982.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context. State University of New York Press, 1988.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology. Continuum, 1994.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. "Original Sin Revisited." Process Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 1991, pp. 233-243. https://doi.org/10.5840/process199120422.
Tanner, Kathryn. Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology. Fortress Press, 2001.
Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon Press, 1996.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected ed., edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, Free Press, 1978.
Wright, N. T. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press, 2003.
Their inclusion does not imply that these scholars share a common theological position or endorse the conclusions developed in our essay. Some work explicitly within process-relational theology, while others approach Christian doctrine through historical criticism, classical theology, feminist reconstruction, systematic theology, or theological ethics.
Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne provide important philosophical foundations for understanding existence through relationship, becoming, creativity, and divine responsiveness. Their work helps illuminate alternatives to metaphysical assumptions that have typically portrayed God as wholly unaffected by creation. Nevertheless, our independent philosophical investigations through Embodied Relational Reality and Generative Relational Realism are not simply reproductions of their systems.
John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin demonstrate how process philosophy may enter into constructive dialogue with Christianity's inherited doctrines. Cobb's Christ in a Pluralistic Age is especially relevant to our reconsideration of incarnation and the significance of Jesus Christ within a world whose divine possibilities are not restricted to Christianity. Their collaborative Process Theology offers a broader framework for examining divine power, freedom, salvation, and Christian existence.
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki contributes an accessible yet substantive interpretation of Christian faith through process theology. Her treatment of God, Christ, and church is especially helpful for understanding how theological reconstruction can extend beyond abstract metaphysical questions into the practices and responsibilities of Christian communities.
Thomas Jay Oord provides a contemporary account of divine love as inherently uncontrolling. His writings are particularly relevant to our rejection of coercive omnipotence and our reconsideration of providence, suffering, prayer, and divine participation. His work also requires us to examine whether a theology of noncoercive love can provide a sufficiently meaningful account of divine agency without making God responsible for every tragedy.
John Barton, Marcus J. Borg, Peter Enns, and James D. G. Dunn provide historical-critical and interpretive resources for reconsidering Scripture, revelation, and the development of Christian faith. Barton examines the historical formation and reception of biblical literature; Borg explores Christian interpretations of Scripture beyond strict literalism; and Enns investigates biblical inspiration within its historical, cultural, and literary contexts. Dunn's Jesus Remembered and Christology in the Making examine the historical Jesus, early Christian testimony, and the development of Christological beliefs. Together, these scholars help distinguish historical experiences and developing religious interpretations from later claims concerning biblical authority, inspiration, incarnation, and Christian doctrine.
Kathryn Tanner offers a systematic Christian treatment of Jesus, humanity, and Trinity. Her work provides an important conversation partner for examining whether a reconstructed Christology can retain substantive Christian meaning rather than reducing incarnation to exemplary human behavior or divine love to a general ethical principle.
Jürgen Moltmann is especially significant for his theology of the crucified God. His treatment of divine solidarity, suffering, and the cross challenges representations of God as detached from human pain. Although his theological framework differs from our process-relational proposal, his work helps illuminate the significance of divine love understood through vulnerability rather than domination.
Gustaf Aulén provides an influential historical interpretation of Christian atonement through his study of Christus Victor, contrasting understandings of Christ's victory over sin and death with satisfaction and moral-influence approaches. His work helps clarify the historical diversity of Christian atonement theories and provides a useful comparison for our reconstruction of salvation through noncoercive divine love and relational reconciliation.
Dale C. Allison Jr. and N. T. Wright contribute substantial scholarship concerning the historical testimony and theological significance of Jesus' resurrection. Their different approaches help clarify the distinction between historical investigation, interpretation of early Christian testimony, and the Christian confession of resurrection. Their inclusion does not establish the historical or metaphysical truth of resurrection, but provides important resources for investigating its continuing theological meaning.
Catherine Keller contributes a constructive theology of creation and becoming that challenges traditional assumptions concerning unilateral divine power and creation from nothing. Her work is especially relevant to the understanding of creatio continua and panentheism developed in Essay Seven A, and to the implications of those commitments for Christian theology in Essay Seven B.
Elizabeth A. Johnson offers an important critical and constructive examination of theological language. Her work demonstrates how inherited descriptions of God may be reconsidered in light of human experience, exclusion, and the ethical consequences of religious interpretation. This contribution is particularly relevant to our insistence that Christian doctrinal language remain open to criticism and responsible reconstruction.
Miroslav Volf contributes a Christian theological account of exclusion, otherness, reconciliation, and the responsibilities of human community. His work supports our examination of salvation and reconciliation as realities with personal, communal, and ethical significance, rather than merely abstract doctrines concerning individual religious status.
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Taken together, these authors help establish several responsibilities for our constructive Christian theology.
First, Christian doctrine must remain historically attentive. The development of beliefs concerning Jesus, incarnation, Trinity, resurrection, and salvation must be examined through the histories in which those beliefs emerged.
Second, theological reconstruction must remain philosophically responsible. Assertions concerning divine presence, agency, relationality, and becoming require careful examination rather than reliance upon inherited religious authority.
Third, Christian theology must preserve its distinctive confessional language without confusing theological interpretation with independently demonstrated knowledge.
Finally, its ethical consequences must remain central. A theology that confesses God as love must be evaluated not only through the coherence of its explanations, but also through the forms of religious conduct, human relationships, social responsibility, and care for creation that it encourages.
The purpose of these readings is therefore neither to produce a uniform theological system nor to establish the certainty of our own proposals through scholarly authority. Rather, they provide a diverse intellectual conversation through which our constructive Christian theology may be developed, questioned, corrected, and responsibly reconsidered.
Our guiding conviction remains that Christian faith must be willing to examine its inherited understandings while continuing to ask how divine love might be more faithfully understood and expressed within an open, relational, and becoming world.
The purpose of this appendix is to provide an accessible comparison between representative inherited theological emphases and the constructive relational interpretations developed throughout Essays 7A and 7B.
The comparison is not intended to suggest that classical Christianity possesses one uniform theological system. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, liberationist, and other Christian traditions have offered differing accounts of divine power, revelation, salvation, and human participation. Some historical Christian interpretations already contain important relational elements.
Rather, the following comparison identifies several influential theological assumptions and demonstrates how our process-relational Christian theology proposes to reconsider them.
Our reconstruction begins with the confession that God is love. Divine love becomes the governing principle through which the character of God, the meaning of divine action, and the responsibilities of Christian faith are interpreted.
Comparative Overview
| Theological category | Representative inherited emphasis | Our relational Christian reconstruction |
|---|---|---|
| God | God as supreme, sovereign, perfect being, commonly described through divine attributes | God as inherently loving, relational, responsive, and faithful; love governs every divine attribute |
| Holiness | Divine purity, perfection, moral otherness, and distinction from creation | The integrity, faithfulness, and life-giving character of divine love |
| Sovereignty | Supreme divine authority, sometimes understood as exhaustive control over events | God's enduring faithfulness and loving participation within a creation possessing genuine freedom |
| Omnipotence | Divine ability to accomplish all that is consistent with God's nature | Noncoercive divine power expressed through persuasion, invitation, and relational responsiveness |
| Omniscience | Complete divine knowledge, sometimes including every future event as eternally settled | God's knowledge includes every actuality and possibility, while an open future is not yet fully actualized |
| Immutability | God's unchanging being, perfection, or character; interpretations differ concerning divine experience | God's loving character remains faithful while God's relational experience grows through creation's becoming |
| Creation | Divine creation of the world, frequently interpreted through creatio ex nihilo | Creatio continua: ongoing creation through relational participation, emergence, and becoming |
| Providence | Divine governance and preservation, sometimes understood through predetermined outcomes | Continuous divine participation offering possibilities without unilaterally determining their realization |
| Transcendence | God's distinction from, and sometimes imagined separation beyond, the world | God's inexhaustibility without requiring separation from creation |
| Immanence | Divine presence within creation | God's intimate and responsive participation throughout the world |
| Panentheism | Not a universally accepted classical doctrine; some traditions emphasize a stronger creator-creation separation | All creation exists within God, while God remains distinguishable from and inexhaustible by creation |
| Revelation | Divine communication, often distinguished into general and special revelation | God's continuous communication throughout creation, interpreted through historically situated experience |
| Inspiration | Divine inspiration of Scripture, understood in differing ways across traditions | Everyday divine communication inviting creaturely responsiveness; biblical inspiration is one historically situated expression |
| Scripture | Authoritative religious witness, with some traditions affirming biblical inerrancy | Foundational Christian testimony developed through human experience, interpretation, memory, and transmission |
| Jesus Christ | Incarnate Son of God, understood through historically developed Christological doctrines | Jesus Christ confessed as God incarnate, fully divine and fully human, whose historical existence uniquely embodies and discloses divine love within creation. |
| Incarnation | The eternal Word becoming flesh in Jesus Christ | The eternal Word becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, understood through divine-human relational union within a world already accompanied by God's presence, while its precise ontological constitution remains open to further interpretation. |
| Trinity | One God in three distinct persons, classically understood as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit | Christianity's confession of the relational richness of divine life, preserving meaningful distinctions while reconsidering inherited metaphysical formulations |
| Holy Spirit | Divine presence inspiring, sanctifying, and sustaining Christian believers and the church | God's continuing relational presence and communication throughout all creation, recognized through distinctively Christian language |
| Sin | Human rebellion, disobedience, alienation, and failure before God | Human wrongdoing understood through damaged relationships, destructive agency, moral failure, and the refusal of responsible becoming, without requiring an inherited metaphysical condition of original sin or supernatural separation from God. |
| Atonement | Christ's reconciling work, interpreted through sacrifice, satisfaction, substitution, victory, and transformation | Restorative reconciliation through divine love without requiring God to demand innocent suffering as a condition of forgiveness |
| Resurrection | God's raising of Jesus from the dead and the promise of resurrection life | A substantive Christian confession of divine faithfulness and hope beyond death, whose ontological meaning remains open to investigation |
| Salvation | Forgiveness, deliverance from sin, reconciliation with God, eternal life, and participation in grace | Healing, liberation, transformation, communion, and renewed participation in divine love |
| Prayer | Communication with God through praise, confession, petition, thanksgiving, and contemplation | Intentional participation in God's continuously present and responsive relationship with creation |
| Judgment | Divine evaluation and accountability, sometimes associated principally with punishment | Justice, accountability, protection of the vulnerable, healing, and possibilities for transformation |
| Church | Community of faith, worship, sacrament, doctrine, and institutional continuity | A continuing Christian community of interpretation, discernment, correction, worship, and responsible participation |
| Christian ethics | Moral instruction grounded in Scripture, Christian tradition, and divine commandments | The responsible practice of divine love through justice, compassion, human dignity, reconciliation, and care for creation |
| Hope | Divine promises concerning salvation, resurrection, and ultimate fulfillment | Trust in enduring divine love amid a genuinely open future whose outcomes remain consequential and unfinished |
Continuity and Reconstruction
These comparisons should not be interpreted as a simple opposition between an entirely mistaken past and a more enlightened present.
Christian theology has always contained resources for reconsidering its own assumptions. Biblical traditions concerning mercy, covenant, divine faithfulness, justice, compassion, and love have inspired multiple theological interpretations across Christian history.
Similarly, classical Christian thinkers have not uniformly understood divine power as arbitrary control, nor have all Christian traditions required literal readings of Scripture or exclusively punitive accounts of atonement.
Our constructive proposal participates in this continuing history of theological reflection while intentionally reconsidering assumptions that appear incompatible with an open, relational, and evolving world.
The distinction is particularly important concerning incarnation, Trinity, and resurrection. We are not proposing that these convictions be discarded merely because their historical formulations developed within ancient philosophical settings. Instead, we ask whether their distinctive Christian significance can be reconsidered without requiring that every inherited metaphysical explanation remain permanently binding.
Some questions remain unresolved. The precise ontological meaning of Christ's divinity, the internal relational distinctions of the Trinity, the nature of resurrection, and the operation of divine agency require further examination.
Such incompleteness is not a something to be avoided. But reflects our conviction that religious interpretation remains historically developing and must remain accountable to continuing knowledge.
The purpose of relational reconstruction is therefore not to replace Christian theology with philosophy, but to explore how Christianity's distinctive confessions may be understood through a more coherent and life-giving account of divine love, creation, and human participation.
Throughout Essays Seven A and Seven B, we have sought to maintain an important distinction between the reality being investigated and the interpretations through which human beings seek to understand it.
Scientific investigation, historical scholarship, philosophical reasoning, and Christian theology may examine related questions, but they do not necessarily employ identical methods or arrive at equivalent kinds of conclusions.
Confusing these inquiries can lead to mistaken claims of certainty.
A historical text may establish that a religious community believed something without establishing that the belief accurately described divine reality. A philosophical account may explain how relational becoming is possible without demonstrating that God exists. And a Christian confession may affirm divine presence without providing an independently verifiable explanation of divine action.
Our constructive theology therefore recognizes four related but distinguishable forms of inquiry.
Four Levels of Interpretation
1. Historical and Scientific Investigation
Historical inquiry examines surviving evidence concerning human societies, religious texts, traditions, institutions, and the development of religious beliefs.
Scientific inquiry investigates natural processes through observations, measurements, evidence, and explanatory models.
These methods contribute indispensable knowledge concerning the world in which Christianity emerged and the natural reality within which religious life occurs.
They do not, by themselves, establish that a theological interpretation of an event is true.
2. Independent Relational Philosophy
Our investigations through Embodied Relational Reality (ERR) and Generative Relational Realism (GRR) explore reality through relationship, responsiveness, differentiation, emergence, and generative becoming.
These philosophical proposals are not dependent upon affirming Christianity or any other religious tradition.
Their claims must remain open to philosophical criticism, scientific examination where relevant, and comparison with alternative understandings of reality.
3. Christian Theological Confession
Christian theology interprets reality through its historically developing convictions concerning God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Scripture, creation, salvation, and hope.
Such affirmations possess religious meaning within Christian faith, but their historical importance or philosophical coherence does not automatically establish their metaphysical truth.
Christian confession therefore remains a form of theological interpretation rather than an independently demonstrated description of divine reality.
4. Ethical and Participatory Consequences
Religious interpretations influence how individuals and communities understand authority, responsibility, human dignity, and the natural world.
Consequently, Christian theological claims must also be examined through their practical implications.
An interpretation that encourages domination, exclusion, indifference, or abuse cannot be insulated from criticism merely because it possesses institutional or biblical authorization.
Three Illustrative Questions
Biblical Inspiration
Historical scholarship can investigate how biblical writings developed, how authors used inherited traditions, and how religious communities transmitted and interpreted their texts.
Relational philosophy can examine how human experience, language, memory, interpretation, and communal interaction contribute to the development of knowledge and belief.
Christian theology may then interpret inspiration as human responsiveness to God's continuing communication throughout creation.
Yet the historical existence of religious writings does not demonstrate that their authors received divine communication, nor does theological inspiration guarantee their historical or moral accuracy.
Our proposal preserves inspiration as a Christian theological category while recognizing the limitations of human interpretation.
Divine Incarnation
Historical inquiry can examine the life of Jesus, the traditions preserved by his followers, and the emergence of early Christian Christological beliefs.
Philosophical inquiry can investigate questions concerning personal identity, embodiment, relational existence, and the possibility of divine-human relationship.
Christian theology confesses Jesus Christ as God incarnate, fully divine and fully human, affirming that in Jesus the eternal Word became flesh and God's own loving life was personally disclosed within human existence.
But historical scholarship cannot establish the precise ontological relationship between Jesus and God, nor does a relational understanding of reality necessarily require belief in incarnation.
The Christian confession remains meaningful while its metaphysical interpretation remains open to examination.
Resurrection
Historical scholarship can investigate the early Christian resurrection traditions, their Jewish religious context, and the development of beliefs concerning Jesus' continuing life.
Philosophical inquiry can consider questions of mortality, personal identity, continuity, embodiment, and the limits of human knowledge.
Christian theology can confess that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Our constructive relational theology retains this affirmation as a substantive confession of Christian faith while examining how death, resurrection, personal continuity, and divine participation might be understood within an open and relational creation.
Yet neither historical testimony alone nor independent philosophical inquiry establishes the metaphysical reality of resurrection or the precise manner in which God raised Jesus Christ.
Likewise, an understanding that creaturely experiences are received into God's relational life does not, by itself, demonstrate personal survival beyond death or establish that divine remembrance is equivalent to personal resurrection.
Our theological responsibility is therefore to preserve the substantive Christian confession of resurrection while developing a relational understanding of its meaning, without confusing historical evidence, philosophical possibility, theological confession, and independent demonstration.
The Responsibility of Intellectual Humility
Maintaining these distinctions does not require treating theology as meaningless or philosophy as incapable of informing religious understanding.
Rather, it allows constructive conversation without subordinating one inquiry to another.
Historical evidence may challenge inherited theological explanations. Philosophical investigation may reveal conceptual difficulties within religious doctrine. Ethical examination may expose harmful consequences of traditional interpretations. Christian theology may, in turn, propose meanings and purposes that are not reducible to scientific explanation or philosophical analysis.
These conversations are valuable precisely because their participants need not arrive at identical conclusions.
Our goal is neither to prove Christianity through philosophy nor to protect Christian theology from criticism.
It is to develop a Christian interpretation of reality that remains historically attentive, philosophically responsible, ethically accountable, and open to continuing reconsideration.
Faithful interpretation requires recognizing the difference between what we know, what we reasonably propose, what we religiously confess, and what remains uncertain.
Such humility does not eliminate Christian commitment. It establishes the intellectual responsibility through which that commitment may continue to mature.
Christian theology has never possessed a single universally accepted explanation of how Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection accomplish salvation.
The New Testament itself employs several images, including sacrifice, reconciliation, liberation, redemption, forgiveness, victory, and participation in Christ.
Subsequent Christian traditions developed differing theological interpretations of these images.
The following four approaches identify important patterns within the history of Christian atonement. They are not exhaustive categories, and individual theologians may combine elements from several traditions.
1. Christus Victor - Liberation from Sin and Destructive Powers
The Christus Victor approach understands Christ's saving work through victory over sin, death, and powers that hold humanity in bondage.
Its historical roots include early Christian interpretations of redemption, although the familiar designation Christus Victor became especially prominent through Gustaf Aulén's twentieth-century study of atonement.
The central question is not merely how individuals obtain forgiveness, but how humanity may be delivered from destructive forms of captivity.
This approach possesses important possibilities for relational theology because it takes seriously the social, communal, and systemic dimensions of suffering and evil.
Nevertheless, a process-relational interpretation must reconsider the meaning of victory if divine power is not understood through coercive domination.
Victory may then be associated with the transformation of destructive relationships and the emergence of life-giving possibilities rather than the unilateral defeat of creaturely agency.
2. Satisfaction and Penal Substitution - Justice, Sin, and Reconciliation
Satisfaction theories, notably associated with Anselm of Canterbury, seek to explain how Christ's saving work addresses the disruption of the rightful relationship between humanity and God.
Later penal substitutionary approaches, prominent in some Protestant traditions, understand Christ as bearing a penalty associated with human sin.
These interpretations are not identical, and their historical distinctions should be preserved.
Both address serious Christian concerns regarding wrongdoing, accountability, forgiveness, and the restoration of relationship.
However, certain formulations raise difficult questions for a theology governed by noncoercive love.
If God requires the suffering of an innocent person before forgiveness becomes possible, does divine justice appear to stand in competition with divine love?
Our relational reconstruction does not dismiss the seriousness of wrongdoing or the need for accountability. Rather, it questions whether punishment transferred to another person adequately expresses restorative justice.
Love requires that harm be taken seriously, but it need not require innocent suffering as the necessary condition of divine forgiveness.
3. Moral Influence and Transformative Atonement
Interpretations associated with moral influence emphasize the significance of Christ's life and death in disclosing divine love and inviting human transformation.
Peter Abelard is frequently associated with an influential medieval expression of this approach, although his theology cannot be reduced to a single modern category.
From this perspective, the cross reveals the depth of divine love and calls human beings toward reconciliation, repentance, gratitude, and transformed living.
Such an approach possesses considerable affinity with relational theology because it emphasizes persuasion rather than coercion.
Nevertheless, moral influence alone may not adequately express the full Christian understanding of atonement if salvation becomes merely the psychological response of human beings to an inspiring example.
A substantive Christian account must also consider what Christians confess concerning God's own participation in reconciliation and the transformation of relationships.
4. Process-Relational Reconciliation - Restorative Divine Love
The cross is not interpreted as an act of violence demanded by God, but as the historical execution of Jesus and, within Christian confession, a disclosure of divine solidarity with those who suffer under destructive power.
God does not require violence in order to love, forgive, or participate in reconciliation.
Rather, divine love continually invites humanity toward healing, accountability, justice, and restored relationship.
Salvation therefore concerns the transformation of broken relationships and the emergence of renewed possibilities for communion with God, one another, and creation.
This approach differs from a purely moral-influence interpretation because it confesses God as an ongoing relational participant rather than merely the object of human religious imagination.
Yet it also recognizes that the distinctive operation of divine agency cannot simply be demonstrated through historical or scientific investigation.
Theologically, the cross expresses the refusal of divine love to abandon creation amid violence and suffering.
Its saving significance is understood through the possibilities of reconciliation that such love continually invites.
Resurrection and the Meaning of Christian Hope
These approaches to atonement should not be confused with distinct theories of resurrection.
Christians have interpreted the resurrection of Jesus through differing understandings of bodily transformation, divine vindication, continuing personal existence, and the renewal of creation.
Historical inquiry can examine resurrection traditions, but cannot independently settle every metaphysical question concerning their interpretation.
Our process-relational theology affirms that the experiences of creation genuinely contribute to God's relational life. Yet the preservation of creaturely experience within God does not automatically establish personal resurrection or the continuing consciousness of individuals beyond death.
Consequently, Christian theology retains the confession that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Our process-relational interpretation seeks to understand this affirmation within an open and evolving creation without reducing resurrection to metaphor, identifying divine remembrance with personal resurrection, or claiming that independent philosophical inquiry has established its precise nature.
Its significance for our present proposal concerns the Christian conviction that divine love and the possibilities of reconciliation are not necessarily exhausted by the apparent finality of suffering and death.
A Constructive Conclusion
The diversity of Christian atonement interpretations reminds us that no single historical explanation has exhausted Christianity's understanding of salvation.
Our relational proposal does not seek to dismiss this inheritance. Rather, it evaluates inherited interpretations through the governing confession that God is love.
The question is therefore not merely which theory best preserves traditional language, but which account most faithfully expresses divine love while taking seriously suffering, wrongdoing, accountability, creaturely freedom, and the continuing possibilities of reconciliation.
Atonement, understood relationally, is not the satisfaction of a divine requirement for violence, but the continuing restorative work of divine love inviting creation toward renewed relationship and life.
The following definitions summarize important terms used throughout our constructive Christian relational theology. They are offered as working explanations rather than final or universally accepted theological definitions.
Amipotence
A term associated especially with Thomas Jay Oord, describing divine power as the power of uncontrolling love. Within this understanding, God acts through loving participation rather than unilateral coercion.
Atonement
The Christian understanding of Christ's reconciling work. Within our relational proposal, atonement emphasizes healing, accountability, transformation, and the restoration of damaged relationships rather than divinely required punishment.
Becoming
The ongoing process through which reality develops through relationships, interactions, and emerging possibilities. Becoming emphasizes that existence is not merely the persistence of finished entities but the continuous emergence of actuality.
Christology
The theological study of Jesus Christ, including questions concerning his identity, humanity, divinity, incarnation, and significance for Christian faith.
Covenant
The biblical and Christian understanding of a continuing relationship between God and God's people, involving divine faithfulness and human responsibility. Within relational theology, covenant may be understood as an enduring invitation into reciprocal relationship, ethical responsibility, and loving participation rather than unconditional submission to unilateral divine authority.
Creatio Continua
Latin for continuous creation. A theological understanding in which creation is an ongoing process of relational emergence and becoming rather than merely the completed result of an original divine act.
Creatio Ex Nihilo
Latin for creation from nothing. A classical Christian doctrine affirming that God creates without dependence upon preexisting independent material. Our proposal emphasizes creatio continua without treating it as a scientifically demonstrated account of cosmic origins.
Divine Agency
God's capacity to participate meaningfully in creation's unfolding reality. Within our process-relational theology, divine agency expresses continuous loving presence, persuasion, responsiveness, and the offering of possibilities without overriding the genuine causal capacities and freedom of creation.
Divine Immanence
God's intimate presence within creation. Our relational theology understands divine immanence through continuous participation and responsiveness rather than mere spatial presence.
Divine Persuasion
The theological understanding that God invites creatures toward possibilities for life, reconciliation, and flourishing without unilaterally determining their responses.
Divine Transcendence
God's distinction from and inexhaustibility by creation. Within our panentheistic theology, transcendence does not require God's separation from the world.
Embodied Relational Reality (ERR)
Our independent philosophical ontology emphasizing that existence is fundamentally embodied, relational, and constituted through interconnected reality. ERR is not dependent upon a Christian theological interpretation.
Eschatology
The theological study of ultimate hope, fulfillment, resurrection, judgment, and the future of creation. A relational eschatology considers such questions within an open future rather than assuming every outcome is already settled.
Generative Relational Realism (GRR)
Our independent philosophical metaphysics exploring reality through generative relationships, differentiation, responsiveness, constraint, emergence, and becoming. Like ERR, it remains distinguishable from Christian theological confession.
Grace
The freely offered and continuing expression of divine love, presence, and invitation toward renewed relationship. Within relational theology, grace is not restricted to occasional supernatural intervention or exclusively Christian experience, but accompanies creation as God's persistent invitation toward healing, transformation, reconciliation, and responsible participation.
Incarnation
The Christian confession that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, fully divine and fully human, in whom the eternal Word became flesh. Within our relational theology, incarnation is understood as the personal embodiment of divine life within creation, without requiring God to enter from an otherwise separate supernatural realm. The precise ontological constitution of this divine-human union remains open to further theological and philosophical investigation.
Inspiration
Within our theological proposal, God's continuous communication inviting creaturely responsiveness. Biblical inspiration is understood as a historically situated expression of this broader divine communication rather than a guarantee of textual infallibility.
Noncoercive Divine Love
Love that does not determine every creaturely response through unilateral control. It expresses divine faithfulness through invitation, participation, and responsiveness while preserving genuine creaturely agency.
Panentheism
A theological understanding affirming that all creation exists within God and God is present throughout creation, while God is not identical with or exhausted by the universe.
Pantheism
The identification of God with the whole of reality. Unlike panentheism, pantheism does not generally preserve the same distinction between divine reality and the totality of the world.
Process Theology
A family of constructive theological approaches influenced by process philosophy, particularly Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, emphasizing relationship, becoming, divine responsiveness, and the significance of creaturely participation.
Reconciliation
The restoration or transformation of damaged relationships through truthfulness, accountability, justice, forgiveness where appropriate, and renewed possibilities for communion. Genuine reconciliation cannot require the denial of harm or the elimination of personal freedom.
Redemption
The Christian understanding of deliverance, liberation, and restoration. Within our relational theology, redemption expresses the emergence of life-giving possibilities amid histories marked by suffering, alienation, and broken relationships.
Relational Participation
The active contribution of creatures to the world's unfolding becoming through their responses, interactions, and capacities. Christian theology interprets responsible participation as a possible expression of responsiveness to divine love.
Resurrection
The Christian confession that Jesus was raised from the dead and that divine life possesses possibilities beyond death. Our theology retains resurrection as a substantive religious affirmation while distinguishing it from conclusions established by historical or philosophical investigation.
Revelation
Divine communication as interpreted within religious experience and tradition. Our proposal understands revelation through God's continuous relationship with creation rather than exclusively through exceptional supernatural disclosures.
Salvation
The Christian understanding of deliverance and reconciliation with God. Our relational reconstruction emphasizes healing, liberation, transformation, and renewed participation in divine love, including the restoration of human and ecological relationships.
Sanctification
The continuing transformation of Christian life toward greater faithfulness, love, justice, humility, and responsible participation. It is understood as ongoing spiritual and relational development rather than completed moral perfection.
Sin
An inherited Christian theological category used to interpret human wrongdoing, alienation, and failures of responsibility before God and others. Within our relational reconstruction, the realities associated with sin are examined through destructive relationships, moral failure, injustice, and the refusal of life-giving possibilities. Their seriousness does not depend upon affirming inherited guilt, supernatural separation from God, or the introduction of mortality through an original human transgression.
Soteriology
The branch of Christian theology concerned with salvation, including questions of sin, grace, atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and participation in divine life.
Theosis
A Christian theological term, especially important in Eastern Christianity, describing participation in divine life. Our relational theology may draw upon this language while distinguishing participation in God's loving life from the identification of creatures with God.
Trinity
The Christian confession of one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our relational reconstruction explores the meaningful distinctions and relational richness of divine life while acknowledging the limitations of human descriptions of God's internal being.
A Note on Theological Language
These definitions demonstrate how inherited Christian vocabulary may be preserved while its underlying assumptions are reconsidered.
The purpose of developing a relational theological vocabulary is not merely to substitute contemporary expressions for traditional religious terminology.
Rather, it is to examine whether Christian language can continue to convey meaningful theological convictions within a world understood through relationship, emergence, scientific investigation, historical development, and generative becoming.
Some terms retain substantial continuity with inherited Christian usage. Others undergo significant reconstruction, particularly those concerning divine power, creation, inspiration, providence, sin, and salvation.
Still others, including incarnation, Trinity, resurrection, and eschatology, raise questions that cannot be resolved simply through philosophical reinterpretation.
These distinctions remain important because Christian theology must not confuse the coherence of its language with the demonstrated truth of its theological claims.
Our vocabulary is therefore provisional in its explanations, committed in its Christian orientation, and open to continuing examination and development.
Some fifty years ago in seminary I remember writing out a formative study in one of my graduate NT classes around the concept of "one another". For years I've wanted to place that study into one of my essays as well as into any relational development of philosophy and theology should I have the chance. In this appendix I am now given that chance to share a bit of my thoughts on God's love, Christian community, and our responsibilities to one another as human beings. - re slater
Introduction - The Relational Grammar of Christian Life
Throughout Essays 7A and B, we have sought to develop a distinctly Christian relational theology that takes the church's foundational confessions seriously while reconsidering their meaning within an open and continually becoming world. This theological reconstruction begins with the Christian affirmation that God is love and proceeds through a relational understanding of creation, divine participation, incarnation, salvation, and responsible Christian living.
Yet a relational Christian theology cannot remain solely a discussion about God's nature or the metaphysical character of reality. It must also consider how Christians are called to participate in the relationships through which their lives, communities, and shared futures develop.
The New Testament provides an important starting point through its recurring instructions concerning how believers should live with "one another." These expressions appear across the Gospels, Pauline letters, and other early Christian writings. They address love, patience, kindness, forgiveness, humility, service, hospitality, encouragement, responsibility, and the avoidance of destructive relationships.
Read collectively, these teachings form a substantial body of early Christian relational ethics. They suggest that the Christian life is not simply an individual commitment to religious belief, but a shared practice of becoming in which persons are continually affected by the decisions, conduct, and responsibilities of others.
This appendix therefore examines the New Testament's reciprocal instructions, their relationship to the fruit of the Spirit, and their possible reconstruction within contemporary relational Christian theology.
Our purpose is i) neither to claim that New Testament writers possessed a fully developed relational ontology nor ii) to impose modern process philosophy upon ancient Christian communities. Rather, iii) we seek to understand how the historical Christian witness has already expressed significant relational concerns and how these may be reconsidered through our independent philosophical investigations into embodied relational reality and generative relational becoming.
In this sense, the New Testament's language of "one another" offers an important bridge between Christianity's inherited ethical vocabulary and the relational theological constructions proposed throughout Essay Seven.
The English expression "one another" usually indicates reciprocal relationships between persons. Its meaning depends upon context: people may love, serve, encourage, oppose, deceive, harm, or support one another. Reciprocity, therefore, describes a relationship and does not necessarily establish its moral character.
The principal Greek reciprocal pronoun associated with these expressions is allēlōn (ἀλλήλων), commonly translated "one another" or "each other." Greek also permits reciprocal meaning through forms of the reflexive pronoun heautou (ἑαυτοῦ), alongside other constructions.
A lexical search for allēlōn identifies approximately one hundred occurrences in the New Testament, conventionally reported as one hundred occurrences in ninety-four verses. Some Greek textual traditions and digital concordances produce minor differences in their counts.
Importantly, not every occurrence is an instruction concerning Christian ethical behavior. Some describe ordinary conversations, disagreements, collective actions, or relationships within historical narratives.
A study of relational commands must therefore distinguish among three kinds of evidence.
First, lexical occurrences identify where particular Greek expressions appear in the New Testament.
Second, reciprocal instructions identify passages in which members of a community are encouraged or commanded to act toward one another in particular ways.
Third, broader relational teachings include passages concerning love, justice, solidarity, responsibility, and communal life even when they do not contain an explicit reciprocal pronoun.
These distinctions explain why different studies produce different totals.
In a 2024 analysis, Jeff Hawkey identified sixty-one reciprocal instructions expressed through three Greek constructions. When repeated instructions were grouped by their governing action, they yielded thirty-eight distinguishable types of command.
His work provides a useful starting point for our concordance, although the resulting numerical classification should be understood as dependent upon the stated criteria rather than as an absolute theological enumeration.
Our constructive index extends beyond the lexical data. We are interested not merely in counting commands, but in examining their collective contribution to a Christian understanding of relational character, responsibility, and participation.
This distinction is essential because the philosophical significance of relationality cannot be determined by the frequency of a single grammatical expression.
Scriptural vocabulary provides evidence of historical Christian teaching. Relational theology subsequently investigates how those teachings may be interpreted within a more comprehensive understanding of reality.
Among the New Testament's reciprocal instructions, love possesses particular significance.
In John 13:34-35, Jesus' followers are instructed to love one another, and this practice is presented as a distinguishing characteristic of discipleship. The command is repeated in John 15:12 and 15:17, where love is associated with the relationship between Jesus and his followers.
Paul likewise describes love as fundamental to Christian conduct. Romans 13:8 connects the obligation of mutual love with the fulfillment of the law, while Galatians 5:13 places loving service within the proper exercise of Christian freedom.
The Johannine letters return repeatedly to this emphasis. First John presents love for others as inseparable from the community's understanding of God and from its confession concerning Jesus Christ.
These passages should not be understood as interchangeable statements. They arise in different historical, literary, and theological settings. Nevertheless, they establish a recurring Christian concern: the credibility of religious life is inseparable from the quality of relationships expressed through it.
For our relational Christian theology, this concern becomes especially consequential.
If God is love, then love is not merely one ethical recommendation among many. Within Christian confession, it becomes the governing theological criterion by which divine character and Christian participation are interpreted.
Love therefore provides an orientation for patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, service, and responsibility.
However, love should not be reduced to affection or the avoidance of interpersonal conflict. In the broader New Testament witness, it may involve costly commitment, generosity, moral confrontation, protection of vulnerable persons, and resistance to destructive conduct.
Nor should love become an excuse for coercion, submission to abuse, or preservation of relationships that remain harmful.
Within an open and relational creation, love may be understood as participation directed toward the well-being, dignity, freedom, and flourishing of others.
This is our constructive theological interpretation of the biblical material, not a claim that every New Testament writer articulated this precise definition.
Principal passages: John 13:34-35; 15:12, 17; Romans 12:10; 13:8; Galatians 5:13-14; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 1 Peter 1:22; 4:8; 1 John 3:11, 23; 4:7-12; 2 John 5.III. The Fruit of the Spirit as Relational Character
Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 provides an especially significant companion to the New Testament's reciprocal instructions.
The familiar list includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Some translations differ in their rendering of particular Greek terms, but the general ethical orientation remains recognizable.
These qualities are often presented in Christian devotional practice as characteristics cultivated within the individual believer. Such an understanding is not necessarily wrong, but it can become inadequate when detached from the communal setting of Paul's argument.
Galatians 5 addresses freedom, mutual service, conflict, rivalry, and the destructive consequences of living without responsible consideration for others. Immediately before introducing the fruit of the Spirit, Paul warns against relationships characterized by mutual aggression. Immediately afterward, he cautions against conceit, provocation, and envy.
The fruit of the Spirit therefore belongs within an argument concerning communal existence.
Love becomes visible through care and service. Patience becomes meaningful when people encounter differences, disagreements, and the limitations of others. Kindness and goodness require conduct that benefits others. Gentleness governs the manner in which power, correction, and responsibility are exercised.
Even qualities that might initially appear primarily inward possess relational consequences.
Joy may become shared encouragement. Peace may contribute to communal well-being. Faithfulness creates trust through dependable participation. Self-control may prevent harmful impulses from becoming destructive actions.
From this perspective, spiritual formation is not merely the improvement of private character. It concerns the developing quality of participation within relationships.
Our relational theology extends this observation by interpreting character formation through embodied experience, inherited habits, communal practices, and the continuing possibilities of human development.
Spiritual maturity becomes an unfinished process rather than an achieved state of personal perfection.
We should also distinguish the theological claims of Galatians from what independent philosophy can establish. Paul interprets these qualities through the activity of the Spirit. Relational philosophy can examine their human development and consequences without independently demonstrating the divine agency Christians confess within them.
The two inquiries may enter into dialogue without becoming identical.
Principal passages: Galatians 5:13-26; Ephesians 4:2, 32; Colossians 3:12-15; 1 Thessalonians 5:13-15.IV. Mutual Care, Service, and Participation
The New Testament's reciprocal instructions extend beyond personal attitudes into tangible forms of mutual responsibility.
Jesus' washing of his disciples' feet in John 13 provides a particularly vivid image of service. Within the narrative, the action challenges established expectations concerning status, honor, and authority.
Paul's letters similarly emphasize shared responsibility within Christian communities. Romans 12 presents believers as members of a larger body, while 1 Corinthians 12 uses the body metaphor to describe mutual concern among members with different functions and capacities.
Galatians 6:2 encourages believers to bear one another's burdens. First Peter 4:9-10 associates hospitality and the use of gifts with service toward others.
These instructions reveal a recurring insight: communal well-being depends upon the willingness of participants to recognize that their lives and needs are connected.
Mutual care is therefore more than charity offered by the self-sufficient to the dependent. It acknowledges that vulnerability, need, assistance, and shared responsibility are ordinary features of human existence.
This becomes especially meaningful within Embodied Relational Reality. Human beings do not exist as isolated substances whose relationships are secondary additions to an otherwise complete identity. Their existence develops through biological, psychological, social, cultural, and ecological relationships.
From this perspective, mutual service can be interpreted as an ethical expression of the interdependence already present within embodied reality.
Nevertheless, philosophical interdependence does not automatically produce compassion. Relationships may also be exploitative, coercive, indifferent, or destructive.
The Christian instruction to serve one another therefore adds an ethical direction to the reality of interdependence. It calls participants to respond to relational existence through care rather than domination, generosity rather than exploitation, and shared responsibility rather than indifference.
Principal passages: John 13:14; Romans 12:5; 14:19; 1 Corinthians 11:33; 12:25-26; Galatians 5:13; 6:2; 1 Peter 4:9-10.V. Humility, Equality, and the Refusal of Domination
Several New Testament instructions encourage humility, mutual honor, and forms of conduct that place the interests of others alongside or ahead of one's own.
Romans 12:10 encourages mutual honor, while Romans 12:16 emphasizes a shared disposition that resists self-importance. Philippians 2:3 calls believers to regard others with humility, and First Peter 5:5 associates humility with relationships within the Christian community.
Ephesians 5:21 introduces reciprocal submission within a broader passage addressing household relationships.
These texts raise important historical and ethical questions. The early Christian communities existed within social worlds structured through slavery, patriarchy, household hierarchy, economic inequality, and established expectations concerning honor and authority. Consequently, the presence of reciprocal language should not lead us to assume that every associated social arrangement was egalitarian in its original setting.
Nor should we confuse humility with submission to injustice. Within constructive relational theology, humility may be understood as the responsible recognition that one's existence, understanding, and flourishing are inseparable from others. This includes an acknowledgment of one's limitations and a willingness to receive criticism, learn, and change.
Theologically, humility also challenges representations of divine or ecclesiastical authority organized primarily around domination. If divine power is understood through noncoercive love, then Christian authority should be evaluated by its capacity to protect, serve, enable, and sustain responsible participation.
Nevertheless, the refusal of domination does not eliminate the need to resist harm. Protecting those threatened by violence or exploitation may require appropriate intervention and enforceable boundaries.
A relational Christian ethics of humility must therefore remain attentive to differences of power, vulnerability, and responsibility.
Principal passages: Romans 12:10, 16; Philippians 2:3-5; Ephesians 5:21; 1 Peter 5:5.VI. Truthfulness, Speech, and Mutual Formation
Relationships develop not only through visible conduct but also through language, interpretation, shared memory, and communication.
The New Testament repeatedly addresses how members of Christian communities speak to and about one another.
Ephesians 4:25 connects truthfulness with communal membership. Colossians 3:9 prohibits deception, while Colossians 3:16 associates communal instruction with teaching and admonition.
First Thessalonians 5:11 encourages mutual strengthening. Hebrews 3:13 and 10:24-25 emphasize encouragement and attentiveness to others.
These passages recognize that language participates in the formation of communal life.
Words may sustain trust, encourage courage, communicate understanding, and help people reconsider destructive behavior. They may also deceive, humiliate, manipulate, isolate, and reinforce damaging institutional assumptions.
Within our philosophical account of generative becoming, communication participates in the formation and transmission of meaning. Shared interpretations can become recurring patterns through which communities organize their experience and expectations.
Such patterns may support creative development, but they may also become restrictive or destructive. This observation connects naturally with Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's account of institutional intersubjectivity and the inherited structures of consciousness through which communities influence their members.
The Christian responsibility to speak truthfully and encourage others consequently acquires significance beyond interpersonal politeness. It becomes part of the continuing formation, correction, and transformation of shared existence.
This also requires critical attention to religious language itself. Christian institutions may transmit inherited interpretations as unquestionable truths, making dissent appear disloyal or morally suspect. Responsible relational formation must therefore permit disagreement, criticism, and the revision of inherited beliefs when warranted.
Principal passages: Romans 15:14; Ephesians 4:25; 5:19; Colossians 3:9, 16; 1 Thessalonians 4:18; 5:11; Hebrews 3:13; 10:24-25; James 4:11; 5:9.VII. Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Restorative Responsibility
Forgiveness occupies an important place within the New Testament's reciprocal instructions.
Ephesians 4:32 associates kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, while Colossians 3:13 places forgiveness within a broader discussion of patience and communal life.
James 5:16 connects mutual confession and prayer with the concerns of a religious community seeking healing.
These passages have frequently shaped Christian understandings of reconciliation. Yet their ethical implications must be considered carefully.
Forgiveness cannot responsibly mean denying that harm occurred, dismissing the suffering of victims, or compelling injured persons to resume unsafe relationships.
Nor should reconciliation be reduced to the removal of guilt without acknowledgment, accountability, and transformation.
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's relational theology offers an especially useful conversation partner here. Her reconstruction of original sin examines inherited social patterns of destructiveness, while her treatment of violence and forgiveness emphasizes the well-being of persons within relationships marked by injury.
Suchocki's work invites Christian theology to consider how wrongdoing may become institutionalized and transmitted across generations.
Within our own relational construction, destructive patterns arise through actual relationships, decisions, habits, and institutions rather than through an inherited metaphysical defect of humanity.
Salvation and reconciliation may accordingly be understood as participation in possibilities for healing, justice, liberation, and renewed relationship.
But these possibilities are not guaranteed.
Some harms cannot be reversed. Some relationships cannot responsibly be restored. Some losses eliminate futures that would otherwise have become possible.
A noncoercive theology of divine love must take these realities seriously.
Christian forgiveness therefore remains meaningful when interpreted as a response directed toward truthfulness, well-being, and the interruption of further harm, rather than as a demand that victims surrender their freedom or safety.
Principal passages: Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13; James 5:16; with related teachings in Matthew 18:15-17 and Romans 12:18.VIII. Destructive Relational Practices to Resist
Not all New Testament reciprocal instructions describe desirable relationships.
Some explicitly prohibit destructive behavior.
Galatians 5:15 warns against mutual aggression, while Galatians 5:26 identifies provocation and envy as threats to communal life.
Romans 14:13 discourages judgmental conduct that creates obstacles for others. Colossians 3:9 prohibits lying, and James warns against slander and grumbling.
These texts are particularly important because they demonstrate that the early Christian concern with relationality was not simply an ideal of harmonious community.
The writers recognized that communities can generate hostility, rivalry, exclusion, resentment, and destructive patterns of behavior.
This recognition connects with our philosophical understanding that all actual relationships participate in becoming, but not all relational outcomes are life-giving.
Relationships may produce coherence while remaining oppressive. Institutions may preserve their identity by resisting correction. Groups may cultivate solidarity internally while directing hostility toward outsiders.
Consequently, coherence alone cannot function as an ethical criterion.
A community may be highly organized, internally unified, and historically continuous while generating substantial harm.
Our relational theology must therefore distinguish the existence of relational structures from the ethical adequacy of their consequences.
The Christian prohibition against destructive relations supplies a theological framework for examining how relationships can fail to sustain dignity, freedom, justice, and flourishing.
It also reminds us that Christian institutions themselves must remain subject to criticism.
Religious identity does not guarantee that communal activity is loving. The church may reproduce the very destructiveness its teachings seek to resist.
Principal passages: Romans 14:13; Galatians 5:15, 26; Colossians 3:9; James 4:11; 5:9; Titus 3:3 as a descriptive contrast.IX. Fellowship, Peace, and the Formation of Community
The New Testament's reciprocal vocabulary also concerns the formation and maintenance of community.
Mark 9:50 encourages peace among Jesus' followers. Romans 12:16 and 15:5-7 connect shared life with mutual understanding and acceptance.
First Corinthians 12 emphasizes care among members of the community, while First John 1:7 associates fellowship with the religious community's relationship to God.
Within these writings, fellowship is more than shared religious affiliation. It involves practices through which people become accountable to one another, provide care, sustain trust, and participate in a shared religious identity.
However, Christian community must not be idealized.
The New Testament itself preserves disputes concerning authority, religious practice, economic differences, social standing, and the treatment of particular members.
The existence of these conflicts suggests that Christian communities were not originally characterized by uniform agreement nor by unbroken harmony.
A relational interpretation should therefore distinguish peace from the absence of disagreement.
Peace may instead require the conditions through which disagreement can be addressed responsibly without resorting to domination, intimidation, or exclusion.
Communal unity is most defensible when it permits correction and recognizes the dignity of those whose experiences or judgments differ. Within an open and becoming relational world, Christian fellowship remains an unfinished achievement, continually reconstructed through the conduct of its participants.
Principal passages: Mark 9:50; Romans 12:16; 15:5-7; 1 Corinthians 11:33; 12:25-26; 1 Thessalonians 5:13; 1 John 1:7.X. Relational Ethics Beyond the Christian Community
Many New Testament "one another" instructions are directed primarily toward relationships within Christian communities.
This historical limitation must be recognized.
Yet the broader New Testament ethical witness also extends beyond the boundaries of the church.
Jesus' teachings concerning love of enemies challenge narrow definitions of neighbor and communal obligation. The parable of the Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 places compassionate conduct across an established social and religious boundary.
Romans 12:17-21 calls for resistance to retaliatory conduct, while Galatians 6:10 encourages doing good beyond the immediate community of believers.
First Thessalonians 5:15 explicitly extends the pursuit of good beyond mutual relations among members of the church.
These teachings suggest that Christian ethical concern cannot be confined to those who share its beliefs, practices, or institutional identity. Our relational theology develops this insight through its understanding of divine presence as continuously accompanying all of creation.
If God is love, and divine love is not restricted to Christianity, then the dignity and well-being of persons cannot depend upon their religious affiliation.
Nor can responsible participation be limited to human relationships alone. Ecological interdependence reveals that human flourishing is inseparable from the larger world of living systems and environments.
Christian relational ethics may therefore be extended toward responsibilities concerning ecological protection, economic justice, political life, human dignity, and the conditions through which future generations will develop.
This extension is a constructive theological judgment informed by contemporary knowledge. We should not pretend that every New Testament passage directly addressed these modern concerns.
Rather, we are asking how Christianity's inherited ethical commitments may be responsibly developed within a contemporary understanding of relational existence.
Principal passages: Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 10:25-37; Romans 12:17-21; Galatians 6:10; 1 Thessalonians 5:15.XI. Theological Integration - From Confession to Participation
The preceding investigation brings us toward a central concern of our constructive Christian theology.
What relationship exists between Christian confession, the historical teachings of Scripture, relational character, and the actual consequences of human participation?
The New Testament's reciprocal instructions suggest that Christian identity cannot adequately be expressed through belief alone. Christian communities are called to embody the convictions they profess through the developing character of their shared lives.
Within the Johannine tradition, love for others becomes a defining expression of discipleship. Within Paul's letters, the fruit of the Spirit is associated with forms of conduct that resist destructive relationships and cultivate mutual care.
These teachings provide an important inherited theological vocabulary for our own investigations.
Nevertheless, Christianity's historical emphasis upon mutual love does not independently establish the metaphysical position that relation is ontologically primitive or that becoming is metaphysically generative. That philosophical claim belongs to our separate investigations through Embodied Relational Reality and Generative Relational Realism.
The distinction remains essential.
Our independent philosophy examines how reality exists and becomes through relationships. Our relational theology considers how divine presence and love might be understood within that reality. Our distinctly Christian theology then interprets this existence through Christianity's historical confessions and inherited ethical teachings.
The New Testament's reciprocal instructions belong primarily to this third undertaking. They provide historical Christian resources for interpreting what participation in divine love might mean.
When considered alongside independent relational philosophy, these teachings also invite a constructive account of human agency, inherited responsibility, communal formation, institutional transformation, and the ethical consequences of becoming.
Yet the direction of ethical responsibility cannot simply be derived from relational existence itself. Relationships may sustain life or diminish it. Generative processes may produce beneficial or destructive outcomes. Communities may cultivate compassion or reproduce injustice.
Christian theology therefore interprets these possibilities through its governing confession that God is love.
Love becomes the theological orientation through which relational freedom, human dignity, justice, and responsibility are reconsidered.
In this sense, the practices described through the New Testament's "one another" teachings become meaningful expressions of Christian participation within an unfinished creation.
They are not simply commandments to be obeyed. They are invitations toward ways of living through which inherited patterns may be transformed and new possibilities for life-giving relationship may emerge.
The New Testament's recurring reciprocal instructions demonstrate that relational responsibility has long occupied an important place within Christianity's understanding of faithful living.
Love, patience, kindness, humility, truthfulness, forgiveness, mutual care, peace, and shared responsibility appear throughout its ethical witness. So too do warnings against envy, deception, hostility, judgment, and destructive participation.
These teachings do not constitute a complete relational ontology. Nor should they be interpreted as though the earliest Christian communities possessed the philosophical assumptions of contemporary process-relational thought.
Their importance lies elsewhere.
They demonstrate that Christian faith has historically understood human participation in communal life as consequential to discipleship, spiritual formation, and the expression of divine love.
Our constructive relational theology receives this inheritance while reconsidering its meaning through an independent philosophical understanding of reality.
From this perspective, human beings become through relationships that precede them, shape them, and receive the consequences of their participation.
The Christian invitation to love one another therefore takes place within an existence already characterized by relational interdependence.
But the ethical character of that participation remains open.
We may sustain relationships that enable flourishing, or participate in patterns that diminish the possibilities of others. We may reproduce inherited institutional destructiveness, or work toward its formidable and integral transformation.
Christian faith, understood relationally, interprets this responsibility through the confession that God is love and through the historical witness of Jesus Christ. The resulting theology does not remove the uncertainties of existence or guarantee the successful realization of every loving possibility. Yet it invites Christian communities to remain accountable to the consequences of their relationships and to the well-being of the creation in which they participate.
To live faithfully with one another is therefore not merely to preserve Christian community, but to participate in the continuing possibilities of divine love through relationships that remain open to correction, transformation, and generative becoming.
The following canonical table is adapted from the textual classification in Jeff Hawkey's 2024 study. It identifies sixty-one reciprocal instructions, including repeated statements and both positive instructions and prohibitions. Short labels summarize the actions rather than reproduce a particular Bible translation. The numbering follows that study's defined criteria, not an independent count of every relational teaching in the New Testament.
| No. | New Testament passage | Reciprocal instruction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mark 9:50 | Be at peace |
| 2 | John 13:14 | Wash one another's feet |
| 3 | John 13:34a | Love one another |
| 4 | John 13:34b | Love one another |
| 5 | John 13:35 | Love one another |
| 6 | John 15:12 | Love one another |
| 7 | John 15:17 | Love one another |
| 8 | Romans 12:10a | Show devoted affection |
| 9 | Romans 12:10b | Honor one another |
| 10 | Romans 12:16 | Live in harmony |
| 11 | Romans 13:8 | Love one another |
| 12 | Romans 14:13 | Do not judge one another |
| 13 | Romans 14:19 | Build one another up |
| 14 | Romans 15:7 | Welcome one another |
| 15 | Romans 16:16 | Greet one another |
| 16 | 1 Corinthians 7:5 | Do not deprive one another |
| 17 | 1 Corinthians 11:33 | Wait for one another |
| 18 | 1 Corinthians 12:25 | Care for one another |
| 19 | 1 Corinthians 16:20 | Greet one another |
| 20 | 2 Corinthians 13:12 | Greet one another |
| 21 | Galatians 5:13 | Serve one another |
| 22 | Galatians 5:15 | Do not destroy one another |
| 23 | Galatians 5:26a | Do not provoke one another |
| 24 | Galatians 5:26b | Do not envy one another |
| 25 | Galatians 6:2 | Bear one another's burdens |
| 26 | Ephesians 4:2 | Bear with one another |
| 27 | Ephesians 4:32a | Be kind to one another |
| 28 | Ephesians 4:32b | Show compassion |
| 29 | Ephesians 4:32c | Forgive one another |
| 30 | Ephesians 5:19 | Address one another in song |
| 31 | Ephesians 5:21 | Be subject to one another |
| 32 | Philippians 2:3 | Esteem others |
| 33 | Colossians 3:9 | Do not lie to one another |
| 34 | Colossians 3:13a | Bear with one another |
| 35 | Colossians 3:13b | Forgive one another |
| 36 | Colossians 3:16a | Teach one another |
| 37 | Colossians 3:16b | Admonish one another |
| 38 | 1 Thessalonians 3:12 | Love one another |
| 39 | 1 Thessalonians 4:18 | Encourage one another |
| 40 | 1 Thessalonians 5:11a | Encourage one another |
| 41 | 1 Thessalonians 5:11b | Build one another up |
| 42 | 1 Thessalonians 5:13 | Be at peace |
| 43 | 1 Thessalonians 5:15 | Pursue good for one another |
| 44 | Hebrews 3:13 | Exhort one another |
| 45 | Hebrews 10:24 | Consider one another |
| 46 | Hebrews 10:25 | Encourage one another |
| 47 | James 4:11 | Do not slander one another |
| 48 | James 5:9 | Do not grumble against one another |
| 49 | James 5:16a | Confess to one another |
| 50 | James 5:16b | Pray for one another |
| 51 | 1 Peter 1:22 | Love one another |
| 52 | 1 Peter 4:8 | Love one another |
| 53 | 1 Peter 4:9 | Show hospitality |
| 54 | 1 Peter 4:10 | Serve one another |
| 55 | 1 Peter 5:5 | Practice humility |
| 56 | 1 Peter 5:14 | Greet one another |
| 57 | 1 John 3:11 | Love one another |
| 58 | 1 John 3:23 | Love one another |
| 59 | 1 John 4:7 | Love one another |
| 60 | 1 John 4:11 | Love one another |
| 61 | 2 John 5 | Love one another |
Source and counting note: The table follows Hawkey's criteria and canonical ordering. Some entries are reciprocal implications of a verse rather than separately worded imperatives. The list should not be mistaken for every New Testament teaching concerning relational conduct. Its 61 entries comprise 51 instances of allēlōn, nine reciprocal uses of heautou, and one occurrence of an alternative construction. Repeated commands have been retained.
Reference Table B - Reciprocal Instructions Classified by Relational ThemeThis table reorganizes the biblical material for the purposes of our constructive theology. The categories overlap intentionally.
| Relational theme | Representative instructions | Key passages |
|---|---|---|
| Love and mutual devotion | Love, show affection, honor | John 13:34-35; Romans 12:10 |
| Patience and forbearance | Bear with one another | Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:13 |
| Kindness and compassion | Be kind, compassionate, pursue good | Ephesians 4:32; 1 Thessalonians 5:15 |
| Peace and harmony | Be at peace, live harmoniously | Mark 9:50; Romans 12:16 |
| Humility and mutual regard | Esteem, honor, practice humility | Philippians 2:3; 1 Peter 5:5 |
| Service and solidarity | Serve, share burdens, care | Galatians 5:13; 6:2; 1 Corinthians 12:25 |
| Truthful communication | Teach, encourage, speak truthfully | Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:16 |
| Forgiveness and healing | Forgive, confess, pray | Ephesians 4:32; James 5:16 |
| Community and hospitality | Welcome, greet, show hospitality | Romans 15:7; 1 Peter 4:9 |
| Resistance to destructive relations | Do not lie, provoke, envy, judge, or slander | Galatians 5:26; James 4:11 |
This table is a constructive thematic correspondence. It does not claim that each fruit has a precise number of associated reciprocal commands.
| Fruit of the Spirit | Relational expression | New Testament references |
|---|---|---|
| Love | Mutual devotion, service, care | John 13:34; Galatians 5:13 |
| Joy | Shared encouragement, rejoicing together | Romans 12:15; Philippians 2:17-18 |
| Peace | Harmony, reconciliation, avoidance of hostility | Mark 9:50; Romans 12:16 |
| Patience | Forbearance, restraint, endurance with others | Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:13 |
| Kindness | Compassion, generosity, practical care | Ephesians 4:32 |
| Goodness | Seeking the well-being of others | 1 Thessalonians 5:15; Galatians 6:10 |
| Faithfulness | Dependability, truthfulness, continuing responsibility | Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9 |
| Gentleness | Humility, non-domination, considerate correction | Galatians 6:1; Philippians 2:3 |
| Self-control | Resisting harmful impulses and destructive conduct | Galatians 5:15, 26 |
Interpretive note: Galatians 5:22-23 provides the nine qualities around which this comparison is organized. The corresponding passages illustrate related relational practices; they do not all contain allēlōn, nor does Paul explicitly assign them to these nine categories.
Bibliography and Research Resources
Hawkey, Jeff. "Preaching the New Testament One-Another Commands." Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview, vol. 5, no. 1, Fall 2024, pp. 1-21. https://seminary.bju.edu/files/2024/10/JBTW5.1_Article01_OneAnother.pdf.
Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene A. Nida, editors. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains. 2nd ed., United Bible Societies, 1989.
Mounce, William D. Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Zondervan, 2006.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology. Continuum, 1994.
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. "Original Sin Revisited." Process Studies, vol. 20, no. 4, 1991, pp. 233-243.
Young, Robert. Analytical Concordance to the Bible. Various editions. Consulted as a historical concordance resource; a specific edition and search method will be needed to reproduce the broader English-word count.
Primary biblical materials: The canonical New Testament, particularly John 13-15; Romans 12-15; 1 Corinthians 12-13; Galatians 5-6; Ephesians 4-5; Colossians 3; 1 Thessalonians 4-5; Hebrews 3 and 10; James 4-5; 1 Peter 1, 4-5; and 1 John 3-4.
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