We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Showing posts with label Book Review - Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review - Theology. Show all posts
An acclaimed, timely narrative of how people of faith have historically--up to the present day--worked against racial justice. And a call for urgent action by all Christians today in response.
The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore or just don't know. Equal parts painful and inspirational, it details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices. You will be guided in thinking through concrete solutions for improved race relations and a racially inclusive church.
The Color of Compromise:
Takes you on a historical, sociological, and religious journey: from America's early colonial days through slavery and the Civil War
Covers the tragedy of Jim Crow laws, the victories of the Civil Rights era, and the strides of today's Black Lives Matter movement
Reveals the cultural and institutional tables we have to flip in order to bring about meaningful integration
Charts a path forward to replace established patterns and systems of complicity with bold, courageous, immediate action
Is a perfect book for pastors and other faith leaders, students, non-students, book clubs, small group studies, history lovers, and all lifelong learners
The Color of Compromise is not a call to shame or a platform to blame white evangelical Christians. It is a call from a place of love and desire to fight for a more racially unified church that no longer compromises what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality.
A call that challenges black and white Christians alike to stand up now and begin implementing the concrete ways Tisby outlines, all for a more equitable and inclusive environment among God's people. Starting today. Editorial Reviews
“My friend and brother, Jemar Tisby has written an incredible book. It’s powerful.”
- Lecrae, Grammy award-winning artist
“Jemar points courageously toward the open sore of racism-not with the resigned
pessimism of the defeated but with the resilient hope of Christian faith.”
- Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor, Anacostia River Church
"The foundation of reconciliation begins with truth. Tisby encourages us
to become courageous Christians who face our past with lament, hope,
and humility. This is a must-read for all Christians who have hopes of
seeing reconciliation."
- Latasha Morrison, author, Be the Bridge
"With the incision of a prophet, the rigor of a professor, and the
heart of a pastor, Jemar Tisby offers a defining examination of
the history of race and the church in America. Read this book.
Share this book. Teach this book. The church in America will
be better for it."
- Soong Chan Rah, North Park Theological Seminary
About the Author
Jemar Tisby (BA, University of Notre Dame, MDiv Reformed Theological Seminary) is the president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective where he writes about race, religion, politics, and culture. He is also cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast. He has spoken nationwide at conferences and his writing has been featured in the Washington Post, CNN, and Vox. Jemar is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Mississippi studying race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. Product Details Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Zondervan Reflective (January 7, 2020) Language: English
A Marind tribe sharing a southern border with the Sawi tribes of Papua, New Guinea
The Sawi, or Sawuy, are a tribal people of Western New Guinea, Indonesia. They were known to be cannibalistic headhunters as recently as the 1950s. They speak the Sawi language, which belongs to the Trans-New Guinea language family.
Sawi, or Sawuy, is a language of the Sawi people of the Trans–New Guinea phylum spoken in sago swamps in the southwestern parts of the Indonesian province of Papua. Of the neighboring languages, it is most closely related to the Awyu languages to the east.
Sawi is an inflecting language and uses both inflections of the stem and suffixes to indicate person, number, and tense.
A peace child offering among the Sawi tribe of Papua, New Guinea
Journey into the Unknown
I remember reading Don Richardson's story of Peace Child either in my late teens or early twenties and thinking how wonderful his use of the cultural elements he lived within to communicate Jesus not by his own Western standards but by the tribe's own standards whom he had befriended.
Yet in another sense I also remembered how the Sawi tribe was "fattening him and his family up" with good fellowship and tribal affection as they were preparing Don, his wife, and youngest child Steve, for a rite of death. Though Don never mentions this in his journal the tension was evidently there by his recounts of what he was witnessing. The Sawi tribe he was living amongst were a Papua, New Guinea tribe of Indonesia well know for their cannibalism.
It was through a cannibalistic incident between the Sawi tribes where Richardson first saw a glimmer of how to share the deep relevance of Jesus to his machiavellian hosts which might bring a deep spiritual meaning to upsetting both the human soul and tribal practices of a culture devoted to premeditated murder upon one another. And it was through this biblical form of typology that opened blinded tribal eyes to see the atonement of Jesus between God and man.
But rather than ruin or spoil the import of Richard's story I'll leave it to the reader to pick up an old copy and re-explore through Don Richardson's missionary eyes the perils he and his family had entered into amid the discoveries they had made having survived their first Sawi encounters. Peace Child reads simply and quickly, but within the words of the page lies a deep sublimity providing a transitional context between people and tribes of unlike cultures looking to find common ground with one another.
Context
Which brings me to my last thought of the day. Context. If, like Don Richardson, we are seeking a way to share the gospel of God's love through Jesus in a meaningful way, it is by listening and learning from within whatever cultural context (of community context) we find ourselves in. This is where an evangelist or missionary, pastor or discipler, might begin. It will never be obvious at first but with time and insight it might become obvious.
The key to Richardson's insight was that he came to live and work within the Sawi tribes. When he did, he found God's insight into a deeply formative tradition held within the very cornerstone of the Sawi tribes. An identity heightened by lies and deception before killing of another human being. It was this very cornerstone of their tribal identity the Lord reveal to Don that he might use it's same evil to share God's love.
Had Richardson brought his own culture into the tribe he might never have exposed himself to its hazards and reality. Further, Richardson could have recited the "law and order" sections of the bible's Hebraic traditions and simply forced his own Christianized Western culture upon the Sawi. But by proceeding through love and fellowship he exposed himself to the very evil lying resident among the tribes of Papua needing redemption. If he had not done this, the gospel wouldn't have been anything more than window-dressing added to craven human behavior and customs.
Context? Context is everything. Isn't it?
R.E. Slater June 8, 2020
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Never The Same:
Celebrating 50 Years Since Peace Child
Pioneers USA
Dec 12, 2012
The Sawi were headhunters and cannibals when a young couple named Don and Carol Richardson arrived in their village carrying their seven-month-old boy Steve—and a message that would change the tribe forever. The year was 1962, and Steve—and later, three more children—spent their youth among the Sawi, learning the language and embracing the culture in ways that would shape the rest of their lives. Their story was immortalized in the best-selling book Peace Child and a feature film of the same name, inspiring a new generation to take the gospel to the remaining isolated tribes of the earth.
Fifty years later, Steve joins his father, Don, and two brothers, Shannon and Paul, to visit the Sawi village where they grew up. What is the state of the church they planted among the Sawi? Are the friends they played with still alive? Will anyone remember the mark their family left on the tribe? Journey with Steve as he travels to the swamps of Papua, Indonesia, to introduce you to the Sawi, and explore the impact of the gospel among a previously unreached people group.
In 1962, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of New Guinea. Peace Child tells their unforgettable story of living among these headhunters and cannibals who valued treachery through "fattening" victims with friendship before the slaughter. God gave Don and Carol the key to the Sawi hearts via a redemptive analogy from their own mythology. The [Sawi's] "peace child" became the secret to unlocking a value system that existed through generations over centuries, possibly millenniums, of time. This analogy became a stepping-stone by which the gospel came into the Sawi culture and started both a spiritual and a social revolution from within. With an epilogue updating how the gospel has impacted the Sawi people, Peace Child will inspire a new generation of readers who need to hear this unforgettable story and the lessons it teaches us about communicating Christ in a meaningful way to those around us.
Over the years I have made available on this website several hundreds of articles working through Calvinism, Arminianism, Freewill, Sin, Judgment, Open and Relational Theology. More recently, this would include Process Theology and what that approach can mean to Christian doctrine, the sciences (ex., process evolution, process religion, process psychology, process sociology, etc.), and societal living. This, in addition to many, many other topics related to the Christian faith and evangelical church.
Today's post is but a microcosm of those fuller discussions which are available to the reader on this website when reflecting upon the hue-and-spectra of what is being stated in Christian circles today. This is seen most prominently in the evangelical church's harmful entanglement into empire politics proving itself so directly contrary to the gospel of Christ in the current environment of post-truth, vulgar Trumpian practices of dishonesty, non-humanitarian policies, blatant use of undemocratic power, and willful authoritarianism.
For myself, part of breaking away from evangelical teaching was not only its unbiblical view of a disapproving, unloving God, but its corruptible ties to community leadership which, unsurprisingly, reflected its view of God in the tone-and-tenor of unethical treatment of those unlike its own white gospel and congregation. It defeated its basic missional statement to bring Christ to all the world. To all races, genders, religions, cultures, and ethnicities. The Christian God is not the Western God of the evangelical church. God is the God of all the world. Of all cultures. Of all persuasions. As such, my breakaway was both necessary and directional.
Thus my long journey began in revisiting what I had learned from wonderful evangelical teachers, clergy, and lay leaders of the past to what it might become through another lens less committed, if at all, to the basic evangelical tenets of Calvinism - and/or denominational distinctives based upon Calvinism - when reading and interpreting the bible. It required removing the doctrinal boundaries of Calvinism, valuing doubt and uncertainty, and attempting to reconstruct an understanding of our Creator God perhaps through more expansive, contemporary forms of hermeneutical interpretations.
My tradition is that of Baptist, which means I was as influenced by Calvinism as much as I was by the Wesleyan/Methodist doctrine of Arminianism. Yet, as the years went by my denomination's affiliations, if not sentiments, were moving steadily towards a form of neo-Calvinism even as I was beginning to move in the opposite direction away from it. Belatedly of course, and long after my evangelical bible training and seminary studies, did I come to a personal precipice to move against it. Eventually I began to grasp that the direction I needed to go required removing the obstructions binding my feet to where the Spirit was leading me. And make no mistake, the weight of God's Spirit was heavily upon me, even as I dealt with an unwanted year of personal agony and darkness. Whether I wanted it or not, the Lord led me into a wilderness which took some time to travel across.
In hindsight, it’s amazing how hard a task this proved to be, and how deeply unsettling it became personally, when coming to terms with deconstructing and reconstructing my faith after so many long years of committal to its forms and perceptions. I had grown up in fundamentalism, and then progressed towards its more liberal cousin, conservative evangelicalism. So you can see the distance I had to travel towards my present allotments today which I have no name for because of its studied progressiveness to creating a contemporary, postmodern faith. If done poorly I might have become shipwrecked upon the shoals of unbelief and cynicism. Essentially, another None and Done. If done rightly, I had hoped to build on past experiences and knowledge towards a positive meaningfulness of faithful apprenticeship in the best orthodox traditions of the church. With the Lord's gracious help, this I think, has occurred, making me all the more thankful that I had journaled my exploration through this website over the years as I reflected, critiqued, and drove forward with bountiful hopes for the future of a contemporary, Christ-filled, Christianity.
Peter Rollins, The Idolatry of God
Letting Go of the Past
As stated earlier, I will be short and to the point, in the following observations. Many longer discussions can be found here on the website for any related topic wished to be explored. So here we go...
Once rejecting Calvinism's view of the bible where God's wrath and judgment is made the centerpiece of theology, and rejecting how Calvinism is the be-all, end-all of all interpretations of God and the bible, I could then began exploring Arminianism, where God's love and our wellbeing is made the centerpiece of theology. In this endeavor I found the church historian, Roger Olson, curiously of Baptist and Arminian background, a great guide and help. When done, it brought forward thoughtful questions such as to what kind of God we taught and worshipped. Whether God is Judge or Savior; Condemner or Helper; Far or Near to us. This new path I was on had to first address who God was in relation to my sin and its outcome.
In Arminianism, freewill is made front-and-center over God's sovereign determination of our fate as concluded by Calvinism. We, as sinful beings, are free and open to follow God or follow our own sinful ways. There is no mystery here. At once, it removed God from the role of our Judge to the role of our Savior. Though Reformed theology teaches we are all under God's wrath without Christ, under Arminianism we are under God's loving care and direction leading to salvation as sinners. It does not deny judgment for our sins but lays it firmly upon us, not God. The sin is mine, and mine alone, as is its conclusion whether to repent or not by the Spirit of God. Calvinism teaches our fate is sealed in God's election and predestination of our lives. Thus our futures are closed and not open, and our freewill (sic, agency) is denied.
Under Arminianism, a God of Love loves at all times. This means that God is not in the business of condemning but aiding; not excluding but assisting us in our sin and sinful surroundings. Rather than abandoning us as sinful beings God comes in salvation to deliver us from sin that we be remade in the image of Christ. Conversely, when we refuse God's attentions to our salvation (sic, not only as a faith expression but as a faith profession) than God allows us in our freewill to refuse His benevolence. But like a loving parent, God is "hard of hearing," unwilling we refuse Him or track away from Him. He never leaves us even in our deepest sin.
Like the proverbial Hound of Heaven, God will never leave us nor abandon us. At all times God offers not only eternal life, but an enriching life yearning to love all things and all people - even as He loves and partners with us towards helping us do His will of goodness and love. Judgment comes only through ourselves - not God. Our sin judges us - not God. The results of our sin harm us - not God, who feels harmed when we fail and sin. Who suffers with us and with those whom we cause to suffer. Being borne in the image of God is to be borne as a free will being. We have a free will to use with God as our guide and helper, or without God as our guide and helper. The choice is ever ours even as the Spirit of the Lord ever calls us to our Lord and Savior by faith repentance and confession towards faith living and profession. We are never abandoned of God. God is always with us yearning to help us break free of our sin which binds and shackles us.
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after...
- [Excerpt] Francis Thompson, "The Hound of Heaven"
Letting the God of Our Present
Secondly, once a loving God is placed in the center of the bible then all the church's doctrines must reflect God's love and not God's judgment. It's a logical result. John Calvin chose to emphasize sin and judgment. A generation later Jacob Arminius chose to see God as love with the consequence of loving, saving divine action. As a doctrinal illustration, the doctrine of eschatology then becomes less dark and earth-ending. Our "end-times," so to say, becomes our times of "harvest and reaping." The future may be full of light and grace overflowing with the possibilities of where creation may go when guided by the love of God. The distinction is seeing an open future full of possibility and wellbeing rather than a closed future of Armageddon-like doom and destruction. One's belief about God tends to reflect upon one's thoughts and actions about God doctrinally as well as privately; policy-wise as well as community-wise; through institutional church teachings as well as by congregational actions.
So, what about all the OT prophecies of judgment? Or Jesus' sayings of end time doom? Or even the book of Revelation's endless stories of destruction and loss? The burden of man's needs to cease from sin is ever a daily burden. Its reality is very real. So are its heavy consequences when failing to seek God to remove sin's doom in our hearts and minds. We condemn ourselves and all others around us by our sinful actions. Sin's results come from our refusing to "become" Christ images of love and goodness to earth and man.
But if, in the power of Jesus' atoning love, and through His Spirit of resurrection, we might learn to live with one another and with creation in ways of dynamic (or salvific) being and becoming, then the future is open, and we are freer to abandon sin's hallmarks to remake a sinful world in the power of God's love. All of which is open ended, filled with humane goodness to one another, and far more in balance with the Earth's environments which we have destroyed. Arminianism's corollaries then point towards the contemporary doctrines of an Open and Relational (Process-based) Theology and away from a Closed, Determinative Theology of wrath and judgment where the church loses in its historic missional witness and gives up awaiting its Lord's Return. Jesus said in His parables that to such a congregation, or proposition, they have ill-used the currency of the redeeming gospel by hiding it in the ground.
This is Jesus' good news. The Gospel of the bible. That God's love has come and that it is good. That this old world may be delivered from its sinful ways and that cycles of doom and judgment might be broken. The church then may stop giving up and waiting for God to return as He is here, now, waiting to become. That the church's whole effort must be focused on releasing one another to the gospel of God's great love which overcomes the sins of the world through Jesus. To relearn in Jesus that sin can no longer bind the one Cross-won, Buried in Christ, and Spirit-raised from the dead. That by the power of the Spirit a world held in God's love might be resurrected in reclamation and renewal towards God's original intent for creation. That we preach and live a gospel of good news that is compassionate, valuative, generative, socially just, and indiscriminate towards others of difference. This is the kingdom which God wishes to envelop creation within. It is open, free to be and to become, and filled with purposeful intention. And the good news is, it may begin today. If a Christian is to have an end-times eschatology at all, it must be one hope-filled, and reaching out, in loving remake of a world Jesus valued so highly that He came to atone for its sins that we might, by our Lord and Saviour's love, redeem a lost world onto the path of God's loving goodness and wellbeing, in all the many forms which this may mean. Even so Lord, come. And in your coming to our unloving hearts, become within-and-without our being, that we may then become as you are becoming, one soul at a time, one occasion at a time. Amen.
R.E. Slater
May 15, 2020
WHAT MIGHT AN ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION BUILT UPON THE
GOSPEL OF GOD'S LOVE LOOK LIKE? HERE'S ONE EXAMPLE:
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RESOURCES
Thomas Oord's Center for Open & Relational Theology: Videos and Online Resources
Arminianism is a branch of Protestantism based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) and his historic supporters known as Remonstrants. His teachings held to the five solae of the Reformation, but they were distinct from particular teachings of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and other Protestant Reformers. Jacobus Arminius (Jakob Harmenszoon) was a student of Theodore Beza (Calvin's successor) at the Theological University of Geneva. Arminianism is known to some as a soteriological diversification of Calvinism; to others, Arminianism is a reclamation of early Church theological consensus.
Open theism, also known as openness theology and free will theism, is a theological movement that has developed within Christianity as a rejection to the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Open theism is typically advanced as a biblically motivated and philosophically consistent theology of human and divine freedom (in the libertarian sense), with an emphasis on what this means for the content of God's foreknowledge and exercise of God's power. Noted: Open Theist theologian Thomas J Oord identifies four paths to open and relational theology:
1. following the biblical witness, 2. following themes in some Christian theological traditions, 3. following the philosophy of free will, and 4. following the path of reconciling faith and science.
Roger E. Olson said that open theism triggered the "most significant controversy about the doctrine of God in evangelical thought" in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
What Is Open and Relational Theology? It is an umbrella label under which a variety of theologies and believers reside. This variety shares at least two ideas in common:
God experiences time moment by moment (open)
God, us, and creation relate, so that everyone gives and receives (relational)
Most open and relational thinkers also affirm additional ideas, such as the idea love is our ultimate ethic, creatures are free at least to some extent, all creation matters, life has purpose, genuine transformation is possible, science points to important truths theology needs to incorporate, and more.
Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) and John B. Cobb (b. 1925). Process theology and process philosophy are collectively referred to as "process thought".
For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes, contrary to the forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal (will never die), immutable (in the sense that God is unchangingly good), and impassible (in the sense that God's eternal aspect is unaffected by actuality), but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.
According to Cobb,
"Process theology may refer to all forms of theology that emphasize event, occurrence, or becoming over substance. In this sense theology influenced by Hegel is process theology just as much as that influenced by Whitehead. This use of the term calls attention to affinities between these otherwise quite different traditions."
Also Pierre Teilhard de Chardin can be included among process theologians, even if they are generally understood as referring to the Whiteheadian/Hartshornean school, where there continue to be ongoing debates within the field on the nature of God, the relationship of God and the world, and immortality.
Rice's book is a recent example of Calvinistically-based Evangelicalism struggling with the love of God in a non-Calvinistic context. Having not read Rice's work I do hope he gives to open theism its due as it is part-and-parcel with relational theism each of which are founded upon process theology and all integral with each other. What this means is that the future of both God and creation is open as each, together with the other, strives towards beneficial wellbeing and generative becoming. Conversely, the church's typical outlook is that of a closed, determinative future bound for hell and judgment which a sinful humanity binds itself to should we neglect Christ's freedom to be released unto the love and reclamation of God's new creation. Open and Relational Process Theology is the best explanation of the bible and the spirit/world we live in. For myself, it was a natural evolution and contemporary upgrade based upon the biblical foundation of Arminianism as I had explained above. Any theology, such as Calvinism, bearing lesser views of God's resurrecting love, are neither optional biblical views nor worthy of defending by the church if it is to retain its mission of Christ and His gospel of crucified insurrection. It's time to release all other lesser gospels for a gospel of God's love, first, foremost, and always.
R.E. Slater
May 15, 2020
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Book Blurb
Open theism has reached its adolescence. How did it get here? And where does it go from here? Since IVP's publication of The Openness of God in 1994, evangelical theology has grappled with the alternative vision of the doctrine of God that open theism offers. Responding to critics who claim that it proposes a truncated version of God that fails to account for Scripture and denies many of the traditional attributes of God, open theism's proponents contend that its view of God is not only biblically warranted but also more accurate―with a portrayal of God that emphasizes divine love for humanity and responsiveness to human free will. No matter what one's assessment, open theism inarguably has made a significant impact on recent theological discourse.
Now, twenty-five years later, Richard Rice recounts in this volume the history of open theism from its antecedents and early developments to its more recent and varied expressions. He then considers different directions that open theism might continue to develop in relation to several primary doctrines of the Christian faith.
Prevenient Grace All the Way Down by Thomas Jay Oord
In recent years, I've been developing and exploring a theological view I call "essential kenosis." It fits nicely with theological traditions that say creatures have genuine freedom to respond well or poorly to God.
I see parallels between essential kenosis and a theory called "prevenient grace," which emerged earlier in Christian history. Prevenient grace says God acts first ("pre") in love ("grace") to provide freedom (among other things) to humans. We must decide how we will respond to God's initiating action of love. Today, those in the Wesleyan tradition are most likely to embrace prevenient grace theory.
I believe essential kenosis extends prevenient grace beyond its usual application. Essential kenosis says God graces ALL creatures, not just humans. God gives freedom to complex creatures, agency and/or self-organization to less complex, and spontaneity to the most basic creaturely entities.
It's prevenient grace all the way down.
Essential kenosis says something else not usually associated with prevenient grace. It says God necessarily gives freedom, agency, self-organization or mere existence to creation. "Necessarily" means God must give, because giving in love is who God is.
God gives gifts in each moment, because God's nature is self-giving, others-empowering love. This means these loving gifts are irrevocable, to use the Apostle Paul's words (Rm. 11:29). Consequently, God can't control anyone OR anything.
Wesleyans argue prevenient grace makes a huge difference in understanding salvation. God never forces us to repent; but God empowers and calls us. When God’s action is understood in the light of love, prevenient grace makes sense to many.
Essential kenosis expands the notion of prevenient grace for salvation to say God expresses uncontrolling love for all creation. This makes a difference for understanding how God acts to redeem all creatures and all creation, as the Apostle Paul suggests (see Rm. 8:20-21). God doesn't force humans, other creatures, or any aspect of creation!
I need to develop in detail an uncontrolling love eschatology. But I give an overview of what one looks like in my book, God Can't. I call it "the relentless love" view. For details, see the last chapter of the book.
An academic book of essays on love was recently published. My friend Kevin Vanhoozer wrote the first essay, and the second is my response.
Kevin criticizes my theology of love in various ways, preferring instead John Webster’s theology. I address his criticisms in my full essay, but I thought I’d excerpt a portion here. For the full essay, get the book.
Kevin asks five questions, which I list below and offer brief answers. I’m posting these because they might be questions others have.
1) How does Oord reconcile his definition of love as intentional action with his insistence that God necessarily loves everyone, everywhere, all the time?
Answer: I affirm that God can love both intentionally and necessarily. I see no conflict in affirming both. In my view, God necessarily loves, but God freely chooses various ways to love.
Because love comes logically first in God’s nature and God “cannot deny himself” (2 Tm. 2:13), God must love. God is not free to do otherwise. But God is free when deciding how to love. The how of love is contingent, not necessary.
I embrace the essentialist tradition when it comes to believing God cannot deny God’s own nature. But because I believe God faces an open and yet to be determined future, I also embrace voluntarist claims about God’s free choices in choosing how to love. God freely acts in various ways when anticipating what may occur in the future.
As an analogy, let’s assume that my human nature leads me necessarily to act humanly. I can necessarily act as a human and still intentionally choose to type this sentence instead of another. I’m free in this sense. In fact, I’m free to type a wide variety of sentences, despite not being free to be other than human.
In this way, necessity in nature and free intentional action coexist. We can necessarily be human and yet free to act variously as humans. Analogously, God can necessarily love everyone and yet freely and intentionally choose how to love moment by moment.
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(2) Does Oord truly preserve the Creator/creature distinction, or is God on the same metaphysical level with the rest of created reality? If the call to love that God gives each creature is in one sense “no different from the causal influence that other creatures exert,” then doesn’t God exist on the same plane of being as everything else?
Answer: At the start of his essay, Vanhoozer provides a teaser about the worries he voices in this question and that emerge later in his essay. He worries that my theology might be a Feuerbachian projection.
Vanhoozer offers theological realism as an alternative to anthropomorphic hubris, a position that says we can be wrong in our descriptions of God’s love. I join Vanhoozer in being a realist in this sense. I don’t think we can ever grasp divine love fully or define it perfectly. We see through a glass darkly.
I also believe, however, that we should seek to know something of the God whom we can never fully know. I think we should try to grasp divine love as best we can and define it as well as possible. In this, I steer clear of both absolute apophatism and thoroughgoing anthropomorphism.
Wikipedia - Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God. It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.
The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which aims at the vision of God, the perception of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception.
To make sense of God’s love, actions, and more, I think we should draw bidirectional analogies between Creator and creatures. Without them, I think we fail to do justice to the biblical witness and fail to understand well what it means to be made in the image of God. We can embrace such bidirectional analogies without considering God to be on the same metaphysical level or plane as creatures. Creator and creatures differ in some respects but also share some similarities. I’ll address this more in the second half of this response.
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(3) Does Oord derive his definition of love from the event of Jesus Christ or from somewhere else? Answer: Vanhoozer asks this question as an either/or choice. For me, the answer is both/and. I accept the revelation of God’s love found in Jesus and the revelation of God in creation more generally. As I see it, the clearest expression of love comes in Jesus, and therefore he becomes crucial to defining love well. But I’m also confident that my views of love have been shaped by the broader biblical witness, the Christian community, and the revelation of God in creation more generally.
Because God is omnipresent and self-revealing to all creation, those who know nothing of Jesus can accept my definition of love. In fact, adherents of other religious traditions affirm my definition. Those involved in other religions may find resonance between my views of love and what they find about love in their own texts and communities, thanks to God’s prevenient grace expressed throughout all creation.[1]
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(4) In “solving” the problem of evil by stipulating God’s nature as uncontrolling love, does Oord render insoluble the equally important question, “What may we hope?” Oord stresses the importance of human participation in what he calls “participatory eschatology”: “God’s kenotic love invites creatures to participate in securing victory.” But why think that the entropic universe, much less rebellious children, will come around to God’s way at the end of time? Does not this solution to the problem of evil render evil metaphysically unavoidable and necessary?
Answer: There are several questions here. All of them point to eschatological concerns. Answering them well requires at least a book. But I’ll offer a few brief responses that I hope provide light. (I also offered a blog essay on my eschatology, which readers can find here.)
My theology of love’s eschatological vision does not support the kind of universalism that some theologians desire. While it supports the hope that all will cooperate with God, it does not support theories that require divine coercion for redemption.
My participatory eschatology provides some guarantees. It guarantees that God never gives up seeking to save the lost. It guarantees that God’s love is always uncontrolling. God never uses coercion but always calls creatures to say “yes” to abundant life. This inviting, empowering, but uncontrolling love is expressed both in this life and the next. God’s wooing never ceases.
My eschatology also guarantees that those who cooperate with God in this life and the next enjoy abundant life. It supports the hope that cooperators enjoy untold bliss in the afterlife. It cannot guarantee that everyone will enjoy this bliss, because it says God never forces the good life on others. God respects the freedom of rebellious children who continue to reject salvation. In sum, my eschatology rejects unilaterally secured universalism. But it also rejects the view that God gives up loving creatures and offering eternal life. My vision provides genuine hope for abundant life here and now and eternal bliss there and then for those who cooperate with God’s love.
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(5) If Oord is right, is the God who is uncontrolling love more deserving of our worship or [our] sympathy?
Answer: The God of uncontrolling love is worthy of our worship. I worship this God unreservedly and wholeheartedly. Doing so brings me great joy!
I’ve spent significant time thinking about what vision of God provokes my worship. I’ve come to think it’s impossible for me to worship a God who could prevent genuine evil but fails to do so. I don’t unequivocally respect humans who fail to prevent evil when their doing so was possible.
So I can’t unequivocally worship a God capable of preventing genuine evil but who fails to do so. I may dread this God. But I could not unreservedly love and worship such a being. As I see it, the God who can control is unworthy of my worship.
Vanhoozer’s mentions pity as a possible response to my vision of God, and this reminds me of a recent conversation. I was explaining to a fellow theologian that the uncontrolling God cannot prevent genuine evil by acting alone. My friend responded that he prefers a God who can control. He smirked and said, “You know, Tom, your God is just doing the best He can.” I thought about his remark and responded, “Your God could be doing a whole lot more. But He apparently doesn’t care enough to do so!”
I mention this conversation because it illustrates how love is my fundamental theological intuition. When I think about a God worthy of worship, I find far more winsome the vision of a God who consistently loves but cannot control than a God who can control but loves inconsistently by causing or allowing evil.
Some claim the God they affirm both controls and loves consistently. In light of evil, they say it is a mystery how God does both. This measure of mystery, however, detracts from my worship. I’m unable to worship a God who cannot be understood to such a degree.
I can’t get motivated to worship an incomprehensible God.
- TJO
*[1] As just one example, see Rabbi Bradley Artson’s work on love, which draws from my definition (God of Becoming and Relationship [Nashville: Jewish Lights, 2016].
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