Relevancy22: Contemporary Process Christianity: Post-Evangelic Topics and Theology

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The Story of the Bible 4

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon

even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

The Process God of The Bible, Part 1

One of the things which attracted me to process theology is it's brokenness. How it shares in the suffering of others offering compassion and help to those in need. I've never have seen this with stricter religious dogmas placing beliefs over goodness and kindness.

Process theology is one of those approaches to God which sees God as loving and good in all that God did, does, or will ever do. No biblical floods which wiped out the world, no plagues upon Egypt for not worshipping Him (or Her; since I write as a man I usually use the masculine pronoun instead of feminine or neutral Other). No fiery Armageddon end to the old earth.

Why? Because it runs counter to who God is. God is Love. By this quality all other qualities of God are mitigated. When angry God's love allows perfect, loving justice, not officious divine fury. When moved to great revenge God's love makes God incapable of acting in this way as God strives to help and save.

Freewill worlds are not the kind of worlds where one might find a God controlling all outcomes. Influencing all outcomes... Sure! But indetrminant (open) freewill (relational) worlds are the kind of worlds which God's love necessarily brought forth creational freewill as part-and-parcel of God's loving Image (Imago Dei). In those undetermined, freewill worlds we have a loving God who is present in loving actions. Each action producing its own streams of processual consequences. But with each-and-every consequence process theology says God's love permeates all things to do the loving, kind and good thing as He can in a freewilled world besotted with sin and evil.

When the ancient world flooded as the Genesis account tells us in Noah's story it was because of quasi-regional natural events - even as we see today in places around the world being flooded out by storm and wind, fire and climate change. When the plagues descended upon Egypt such plagues resulted from natural events... one asks how, in what way, would God have sent such plagues of hardship and suffering. Can a loving God do such a thing or were these natural events complexly colliding at the same time in the same area? To myself, it sounds like God was somehow involved... but does divine activity elicit judgment if God is love. These are the kinds of questions process Christians hold back on and are much less reticent to calm evil as God sent unlike our Calvinistic brethren (of which I was one not too many years before).

What I am trying to say is that God is not, and cannot be the catch-basin for all the sin and evil done in this world. Sin and evil more likely are simple descriptors of a freewilled creation not acting in accordance to it's divine Imago-Dei nature. A nature structured towards wellbeing, not harm. God is love. God cannot harm. God would not harm. But harm does result when living in a freewilled creation. God's freewill Nature is always TO BE and CHOOSE TO BE love at all times over all other emotions, actions, and judgments.

Thus we ask the questions of good and evil? Of right and wrong? Of whether God cares or not? Whether God is present in our sufferings or not? Or whether God can do anything for us in a world of many possible evils such as the one we are presently witnessing under a cruel war waged by the Russian leader Putin claiming God is on his side to bring the world back to an Imperial form of Christiandom (which, of course, I find conveniently stated as propaganda to those poor Christians caught in a conflict nobody wants and everybody understands as a land-to-power grab).

And so, process theology approaches the subject of the problem of sin and evil (e.g., theodicy) by always reaffirming God's steady love at all times, for all people (and creation), and in all events. Process theology will not affirm a controlling, determining God moved by wrath and anger.

In process thought, God is in the life-affirming struggle found in the event of time and being itself. That all possible actualities concrease based upon their potentialities for bringing wellbeing into that event. Said in another way, God does not control creation but fills creation with divine possibility moment-to-moment to become its truer self rather than it's untrue self. To find its lack in God's Self and not in something else baser and unloving.

Summary

The very first thing I learned about process theology is that it speaks to God's love and that we, as God's followers, must learn to speak this same language that God speaks - and has spoken - to us in His holy person, Jesus Christ.

Love is the summa cum laud of the Christian faith. If the Christian faith is unloving then it does not speak for God but for it's self, it's own "rightness," it's own "truth."

One last, I may be presently persuaded that the process kind of faith I wish to follow is loving and following an Incarnation Christ, but if after all its conjectures and suppositions and speculations if it does not result in the outcome of seeing God's love more clearly across all of my past Christianized God-beliefs and doctrines, than process theology is yet another bankrupt and futile path unworthy to be tread. We follow Jesus. We do not follow an institution, religion or men. Process Theology speaks to Jesus and is learning to speak more and more about Jesus as it grows up and matures. I wish to be one of those who help speak of Jesus more clearly.

My Story, Part 2

A few years ago my wife and I built a house. Not intentionally. No, we bought an older home vacated for five or so years by the death of its widow whose husband had passed on before her. It was kept up and rented out to a family member while it lay on the market unsold over a several year period. Finally it came to us. We bought it. Were thrilled to have it. And decided to do light renovation work by replacing the electrical wiring, older, rotting plumbing lines, and masses of cardboard insulation across all attic spaces.

We began the project and were about 45 days into it when discovering one day the entire wooden foundation was warped and rotted. We were under the belief that the house sat on a poured cement foundation by the inspectors we paid to tell us about our purchase before completing its sale. At this discovery the old house soon became a money pit as hard earned savings were spent to jack the house up 16 feet into the air - including the garage - remove all the lower attached levels including the lower floor/basement, drop off all the wings, while keeping but expanding by half again the main trunk of the 34 year old home. Our purchase intentions went from a remodeling / light renovation job to major renovation within days.

It was heart breaking. The upper floors of the house had already been gutted, we were living in the lower level, and now we had to vacate in order to do a full restoration. We couldn't sell it as is (too much money lose) and couldn't remodel the first floor as it sat upon a rotting foundation. We had nowhere to go but forward into a total rebuild.

So for the next 14 months we dealt with the loss of funds, monetary outflow, taxation problems across the board, the expense of financing a large project no bank would touch, no access to builder loans, and about every headache you can imagine as the old house was stripped and became a new house from foundation to chimney.

No longer would the old house sit on failing wooden walls but on solid, 12 foot high poured cement walls. After 8-9 months of demolition and rebuilding the expanded structure, the house was jacked down and rebuilt as it was meant to be built in the tradition of a contemporary prairie-styled home. However, though the project is now done the decisions we made during four years ago continue to haunt us. We went from a paid mortgage to a new mortgage and have done exactly backwards what the financial experts tell retirees to do. It has been a headache and one of our own making when not deciding to take a huge loss and walk away.

Now perhaps I have said too much. It is a story many others have repeated due to floods, fires, storms, civil war, famine, drought, loss of crops, loss of job, displacement, illness, death of loved ones, lawsuits, criminal indictment, drugs, drinking, addictions, mental or physiological imbalance, family problems, divorce, children with medical ailments, aged cars, broken down heating systems, etc and etc. In one way or another, if you live long enough, hardship will challenge each of us to rethink how we might respond when difficulty comes as it surely will no matter how careful you try to be.

And having been through several personal hardships more than once, none have been easy to remove or lightly travelled over. Each, in their own way, have been devastating in their own way, as I write thinking of job loss, two miscarriages, a wrecked car knocking me unconscious with blood coming off my skull, and a policeman taking me home by 9 in the morning to discover my wife in tears having lost her second child and me telling her I had finished my job and was let go an hour earlier which is why I was driving home before being plowed into by a large van illegally turning onto the road. No job. No money. No first child. No second child. And married by now six years. Only heartbreaking grief. And yes, we've been through many other difficulties spiritually, personally, and physically. Nothing has been easy in this life.

I suppose suffering and experience are our best teachers but each of us can testify to the fact that we each wish it were some other way. That life would be beautiful, carefree, with very little hardships, if none. So too with the narrative found throughout the bible. Every prophet, priest, scribe, tribal or village or clan leader, family member, shepherd, carpenter, pottery maker, home maker, king, soldier, and child has come to God during their time on this earth and have asked the kind of questions one cannot easily answer in this life.

I was raised in a religious tradition which asked these same questions and tried to help fellow believers make sense out of their lives when harm and ill befell them or on the church's membership. Our church fellowship have always, always been meaningful to us, even though I may have approached their questions with other lines of thoughts and helps than the ones being leaned into by the afflicted one or the church. Nevertheless, I also knew then - as I know now - that our Lord comes to us we are because God is big enough to guide and counsel us from our present circumstances however difficult.

Conclusion

Thinking back to my housing project, the two choices I had on day 45 was to completely demolish our newly purchased home or completely gut it and build it back to completeness from its skeleton structure which had been laid bare. I chose the latter even though the former would've been far easier and less aggressive.

Theology works this way too. When in Part 1, I shared my solitary time spent in a wilderness of devastation, doubt and uncertainty, I had two choices. Leave my Christian faith and attempt a resurrection of some sort on my own as many have done in the past. Or, I could stay with the remnants of my Christian faith, discover what those deconstructed remnants might be which I might reconstruct as new cornerstone and foundation stones, and reconstruct all that lay above and below using the latest and greatest theologies and philosophies of the time.

I've chosen the latter by first leaving Calvinism and its neo-Christian counterparts while keep what Reformed traditions I could. Then taking up Arminianism (sic, Methodism, Wesleyanism, older Baptist traditions). From Arminianism the Lord somehow guided me without outside influence or readings into open theism and at the same time relational theism.

At the time I was writing about these theologies I felt they belonged together and wrote for awhile about how open AND relational theology fit together as natural contemporary outgrowths from Arminianism. All bible based. All from the biblical pages. Next I began working on my Baptist and Reformed teachings moving towards Emergent and Progressive Christianity, and finally coming across what I was looking for. What was it? The long and short of it is rebuilding my biblical Christian faith on a better philosophic theology than the one I had inherited, had become traditionalized, and was holding Christianity back from loving and ministering as it should.

Peace, my friends. Peace.

R.E. Slater

November 12, 2021

Published March 14, 2022

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 3

Process vs Classic Church Theism:

Cobb v Geisler

Part 3

by R.E. Slater

Process Theology Debate:

Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb

Posted: Aug 21, 2021

De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of

classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic system putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as process thought itself that aren't there. Pleases note: Part 2 is not on the youtube video nor could I locate it anywhere except here at the linked below." - R.E. Slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism

"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the strange, panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.

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Earlier Posts

with Diana Butler Bass & Tripp Fuller

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The Story of the Bible 3

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon
even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

Self-referential and reinforcing theological systems usually aren't much help when seeking to study non-evangelical theological systems foreign to themselves. Usually, self-referential systems weigh their own selves down in a multitude of ways as is the case with classic theism as upheld by conservative evangelicalism. "Biblically" endorsed systems, having been established as acceptable church traditions "sanctified" by God and "approved" by the Spirit are usually difficult for theologians to peer outside their own veritable faith boxes to look at their beliefs from another vantage point. Or if they do, they must not admit to their findings lest excommunicated by the church, institution, organization, or fellowship in which they participate.

When listening to Norman Geisler I could hear my own biblical background rumbling up from under the past, warning of difference and change. Raised as a straight-laced theological mutt from an eclectic background of Baptist (GARB), Reformed (RCA), Fundamental (IFCA), and conservative evangelical traditions, my "defending" faith did its job to earnestly raise its alarms - diving deeply into the many past apologies and defenses of its separate-but-conjoining heritages to bring into mind past historical heresies, gnosticisms, and such-like-labelling, all shouting "Go no further ye who enter!"

And listening closely to Norman's words (as my tradition had taught me to listen when defending my faith) I heard him say that he had read and studied thousands of pages written by Whitehead, Whiteheadian scholars, and Process Theologians. Which, had he done so, would've sounded in his debate more like my posts here on this site than what I had heard as the outcome of his speech back forty years ago when I was yet young, nearly out of seminary, highly impressionable, very active in ministry, and yet to look at the world beyond my own faith structures, paradigms, and constructs.

Further, had I been sitting in the Claremont audience in support of Norman I would have been shouting Amen in my heart along with John Warwick Montgomery at every other word he spoke as he stood up for Jesus and the faith of true Christianity:

Philippians 1:27 ESV
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,

Galatians 5:1 ESV
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

1 Timothy 6:12 ESV
Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Revelation 2:4 ESV
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

As good bible literatists here's 93 other verses all related to standing firm for the faith once given....

But I wasn't in the audience that day and hadn't any idea what Process Philosophy and Theology is owing to my fundamentalist background, though I was widely read, hailed from a non-Christian, normally dysfunctional home, was basically illiterate in Christianity until I went to a state university, and later learned about my faith more formally through a bible college and seminary. In all these ways and more, I was simply starting out in life learning as I could learn from those around me through books, libraries, teachers, preachers, good friends, my elders, and the community in which I worked and laboured.

Amazingly, it took until my sixth decade, at 58 years or age, until I came to process thought on my own by the aid and grace of the Spirit even as I had come to open and relational theology on my own (both from my studies in biblical Arminianism, sic., Wesleyanism, and away from the systematic Calvinism I was raised in. (FYI: ORT is an outcome of PT, and not the other way around). With each, I had happened to stumble into them not realising the Christian traditions each had risen from... traditions I was totally oblivious too and apparently forbidden to research (well that I was, for if I had I most likely would have never found PP&T even now).

All I know is that after many years of searching I could not find the hermeneutic I needed to helpfully interpret the bible in a better way than what I was observing in "traditional" Christianity. My senior M.Div. capstone project in seminary would be the closer I would come in achieving this goal which someday I should publish. But as good as it was, when discovering process theology I knew immediately how to fit all my past and past studies and beliefs in-and-around process thought. It brought the best out of the Christian faith and must be shared.

Unfortunately, this has not been the direction of my past faith fellowships as they struggled with emerging spirituality movements arising out of person wildernesses of worshipping a non-relational, non-immanent, transcendent God of judgment and wrath (later known as the emergent church movement). Or, could my past fellowships see the non-Christian of color, race, culture, gender, sex, etc, beyond their bible verses of judgment and condemnation. What later became known as progressive Christianity centering in on social, economic, and legal just for all persons living under the US Constitution avowing freedom, liberty and justice.

As it was, both movements have by now merged together, each taking from the other, both the inward and the outward embrace of a God who cares and loves for us in intimate ways we cannot begin to understand in our limiting religious cultures of difference forbading change.

Hence, my former Christian fellowships have wandered off into a number of harming paths led on by the well-meaning, but wrong, Norman Geisler's and John Warwick Montgomery's of their day. Paths of violence, kingdom dominionism where church law rules over any-and-all civic laws, White Christian nationalism and white supremacy each centering on socio-political theologies of exclusion and unlove.

The church's theology seems to always, inevitably turn sour, rotting under its own institutional weight of God's law v God's grace having once again bastardized the gospel in Jesus of God's sacrificial love of service in ministrations of mercy and forgiveness. We, the church of America, having placed blinders onto our eyes, ears and hearts, cannot see the destruction we create when not allowing the Spirit of God to flow into non-Christian communities in kind and loving ways. Ways which might proffer better results than the iron sword and buckled jack boot of American capitalism led by extremist Christian beliefs.

At the last, when witnessing how the past sixty some years of Christianity has evolved since its post-WW2 days into the post-Christian era we now live in it is no wonder we are where we are when refusing the Martin Luther Kings of our communities to sup and have fellowship with us. Or turning a blind eye to street urchins living away from their abusive homes. Or school children caught up into drugs and gangs because they cannot find identity anywhere else. On every front the church needs to dig in and reclaim neighbors, not fly from them because their property values are falling or they don't wish to live in blended communities. All this is how I would describe a White evangelical theology which is better left dead then to resurrect it again.

Folks, the hermeneutic is Love. God's Love where God's Love Wins. We don't need those push-back car stickers saying "Jesus Wins" as it shows the very lesson we hear in Norman's speech. He's not listening. He's already made up his mind that the other guy is wrong. To him, Jesus Wins, not Love Wins. By splitting theological hairs and raising the difference of exclusion evangelical Christianity has made it's own bed to lie in. The bed may be quite comfortable for those having made it. But for those of us, including the Lord God Himself, we would find sleep to fly from our heads if resting upon such unloving covers and bedsprings.

Finally, the foundation can no more be Platonism, neo-Platonism, Thomism, Englightened Thought, and such like. The integral theory to place all other studies and disciplines on top of seems to be process philosophy. All other philosophies, psychologies or theologies are but mere descriptions of process' parts but not its whole.

If you wish a personal God with open future seeking the full potential of creation as it is meant to be, than a process theology built upon process philosophy is the way to go. John Cobb had it right and people like myself and Norm should've been listening and figuring out how to make it work based upon past church creeds and traditions. We haven't and it's taken people like myself many decades later to be able to see it as our church era of the modern era has give away to constructive postmodernism and post-Christian secular thought seeking a better arrangement of society than it presently is showing.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

November 24, 2021

Additional Helps

John Cobb - Whitehead's Model and Multiple Spiritualities

Feb 13, 2015

Center for Process Studies

Check out (http://www.whitehead2015.com) -- Seizing an Alternative Conference

John B. Cobb, Jr. "Whitehead's Model and Multiple Spiritualities" Center for Process Studies Seminar at Claremont School of Theology, Spring 2002.

Q&A - Session 4

Sep 23, 2021

For Series Information go here

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 2

Process vs Classic Church Theism:

Cobb v Geisler

Part 2

by R.E. Slater

Process Theology Debate:

Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb

Posted: Aug 21, 2021

De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of

classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic system putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as process thought itself that aren't there. Pleases note: Part 2 is not on the youtube video nor could I locate it anywhere except here as linked below." - R.E. Slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism

"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the strange, panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.

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Earlier Posts

https://blog.adioma.com/meaning-of-life-according-to-philosophy/

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The Story of the Bible 2

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon

even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

When it comes to evangelical theology one must realize almost immediately that its theology lies in the eclectic collection of many, many philosophies upon which it has been built. Mostly Greek Platonism, and later, Hellenised Neo-Platonism. Afterwards it goes through various permutations of Aristotelian Scholasticism, Reformational Enlightenment, pre-industrial Modernism, 19th Century Neo-Modernism, and now some kind of pre-structural postmodernism. All the while claiming evangelic theology has remained "true" to the Bible.

Which I find convenient as the evangelical bible curiously has remained amazingly "true" to their preferred collection of church creeds, dogmas, tenants, and doctrines. Each one formed as a faith-outcome under the philosophical theories of their century and belief system.

More so, evangelics know they are the right God and right belief because their preachers and theologians each tell them of the "correctness" of their faith as only a dogmatist can say such things. And for those bible teachers and theologs who would dare question evangelical church tradition? Well, excommunication from evangelical churches, schools, journals, publishers, and social media is the usual result. All-in-all its a nice, neat, tidy little system of religious control by evangelics of their contents and message.

But the Bible Tells Me So

Well yes it does, doesn't it? Especially if read in such a way which parrots back to us our belief systems. If you want a warrior God of wrath and hell, it's there. So too, a gospel based upon the Jewish legal propitiation tradition. Inerrancy? Inspiration? Divine revelation? Just read the bible and you'll find it. Reason to hate gays, condemn feminism, mock false teachers who preach God's love. There's plenty of sin verses to warn of "other gospels." My favorite are the knowing the will of God so certainly that any question we have can be found in the real Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that have been copied and recopied. In them we can instantly know the ancient customs of the day and how the religious people back then went wrong and God had to judge them with suffering, death, exile from their homes, and whatnot.

Yes, I'm being cynical as I look around at the church of my day and wonder how we are any different from the religious people back in the bible with only their rabbi's and the Holy Spirit to guide them. So if the bible tells me so and God's love is not being visibly seen, shared, or felt, then I suppose all of us better re-examine how our beliefs got to a place where all people are condemned, going to hell, and disbelieved because our preachers, books, journals, and schools have told us only our own interpretations of the bible are the correct versions of the "true" bible we know and love.

Philosophies now and then

I know of no philosophy which would say it is the correct, God-given philosophy to read the bible in. But they are there across its pages to the scholarly eye versed in ancient, pre-modern, post-scholastic forms of thinking, being, and doing. And when interpreting the bible's collection of ancient legends and narratives it would be best if those passages were better considered from their point of view rather than our own glossy point of view.

So let's take a further step back and ask what kind of philosophies permeated the collection of ancient Semitic (Near-Eastern) narratives within the sanctified, inspired pages of the inerrant evangelic Bible. Pick any ancient Kingdom - from the Akkadians to the Sumerians, from the Amoritic to the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Perian Kingdoms. And don't forget to include the many Egyptian dynasties either to complete this short list of cultural beliefs, legends, superstitions, folklore, and mystifying astrological observations where each empire, each civilization, held a kind of philosophy unique to their religious belief systems. And if you read the Bible knowledgably - that is, being familiar with ancient language, customs, and beliefs, you can see each of these era-specific philosophies readily standing out.

click here to enlarge

What's the point? Over nearly 4000 years of ancient Old Testament history, plus another 2000 years of New Testament history (if we include the historic creedal eras of the church) you can imagine the kaleidoscope of philosophic variants washing up upon the shores of religious beliefs and civilization to be imbibed, composed, synthesized, re-composed, and re-synthesized, into a labyrinth of religious beliefs again, and again, and again.

At which point the Bible scholar comes along to decipher these beliefs to pick and choose among them the most accurate portrayal of God and religion. This scholar would be a man or woman knowledgeable in ancient linguistics, morpho-orthography, social anthropology, ancient Semitic and Greek culture, Hellenistic culture, and over-and-above all this, hopefully knowledgeable with all major Western, Continental, Near-Eastern, and Oriental philosophies over the past 2000 years.

All this so that we can state as "true" believers that we have a "true" bible which tells us of the "true" God we believe in. So let me ask again... "How do we know we have come to have all these theistic assurances? For one, biblical theologs, like Norman Geisler, have come along in their day to tell us what we should believe. But I also suspect evangelic beliefs like yesteryear's creedal doctrines all hinged on the kind of religious tradition we were raised in - or are actively involved - to claim such religious hubris.

click here to enlarge

The Art of Biblical Hermeneutics

Historically, as cultures have grown they tend to be built upon each earlier generation's labors and energies. It would not be uncommon to walk around London, England, to dig down 80 feet, perhaps more, and discover, layer by layer, the earlier histories of the men and women living their lives out in Old London stretching across the eras of its past back to its earliest days upon the Thames.

This illustration would not be unlike a theologian's efforts - be they ancient or modern. Each bible scholar of the past has waded across the muck of outrider gnostic philosophies intermixed with their own philosophical cultural traditions. And in their mirey treks have attempted to ask the question who is God? How would God communicate Himself to mankind? What would God say to us now? What would it mean to us today? And why would God's revelation be important?

We might ask the further question of whether a biblical speaker speaks for God or man; and if his or her revelations fairly represents the God we think we know off the biblical page? Whether in our defensive Christian apologies we are really sharing the God of the bible or the God of our belief systems? When I listen to dear Norman Geisler I find myself asking this question again and again as he strives to be the best servant of the Lord in the history of servant leaders of the bible and the church.

For myself, I've tried to make it really, really simple since I don't pretend to be a smart man. Perhaps a diligent student of the Lord's trying to put things together in my own way, but I need something unremarkable about God and His church to help me know if what I believe about God is worthy of my time, attention, life, family, and energies.

The Art of Christian Living

After 6000 years of communicating to man - which the bible tells is what God has been doing through human voices, convictions, events both natural and man-made, His prophets, priests, apostles, and especially Jesus, His Son, Word, and very God of very God. Jesus, who upended all previous and future religious voices with a simple dictum....

Can you guess what that dictum was? What Jesus summed up as man's duty to God? Jesus said He could sum up God's revelation in one word which would hold us responsible before His Father and one another. That word? Yes, the word love.

Imagine, all the time and effort so many have put into their faith and belief systems coming down to understanding, receiving, giving, being, and becoming the incoming and outgoing process event of love. More a verb than it is a noun, except as a noun it defines the verb which is to be acted upon. God is love. Not was. Is. Love. The Apostle John wrote and rewrote this simple little word across the pages of his first epistle, I John. In Jesus he heard the word love and so reminded the Jesus follower to learn to love because it's the hardest thing to do, be and share.

Certainly, there's got to be more to the Christian religion, or any religion!, than this simple word love, isn't there!? I mean Yahweh took pains to tell us of Himself as the God above all other polytheistic gods! That He is the Sovereign Creator over every creative force! That He is the Heavenly Guide to all furtive soul travellers seeking the meaning of life! But to camp down on the word love when power, glory, divinity, majesty, rulership is so much more to God than love!???

Yes, perhaps Jesus got it wrong. That Jesus really didn't understand Himself as the Creator God of the universe. As the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But I don't think so. When I read bible I read of a Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52.13-53.12). Of a God who was "Cut as Abram' Covenant of Protection and Guide (Genesis 15.12-19), the Altar upon which lambs are slain before the foundation of the world (Exodus 12.21-28), whereupon sin and evil has been laid upon His uplifted Cross (John 19.23), that all rulers and kingdoms come before the God of sacrifice, love, and service, to be judged for their deeds (Revelation 19-21).

How can God's love rectify a host of philosophies, religious traditions and beliefs, and human effort? Because, my friends, it does. It will. It can. Love God. Love neighbor. This was my very simple determinant if a church or a society or a belief is worthy of being trusted, followed, and exampled. Of course, I wish to speak the most correct thoughts about the God I love. Which is also why I am being quite disagreeable with my past fundamental and evangelical heritage gone off the rails in so many unloving, ungodly directions.

So I think we can do better. But to start let's learn to love. The knowledge part is irrelevant without the loving part. That we, as Jesus followers, know and share the God of love who defines His holiness, His Being, His Essence as LOVE first, last, and foremost. Our Lord is the Alpha and Omega of love worthy to be heard, imagined, and testified to by word and deed.

Lastly, Love is a lifelong lesson in itself. I can't imagine anything harder to do then to love one another in all our differences. Let's start today as Jesus had asked His followers many years ago. Let's leave everything else aside until our spouses, kids, family, friends, workmates, neighbors, schools, churches, and communities know we our the children of God because we love as God loves and wish to love all we meet in loving support, encouragement, respect, thought, service, act, and deed. Help us, O' Lord ,to love. Amen.

R.E. Slater

November 12-13, 2021

click to enlarge

The Meaning of Life According to Different Philosophies

Friday, November 12, 2021

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 1

Process vs Classic Church Theism:

Cobb v Geisler

Part 1

My Story, Part 1

by R.E. Slater

Perhaps having come to process philosophy and theology late in life has given to me the added advantage of being intimately familiar with the fundamental and conservative evangelical positions of classic theism.

I was raised and taught within the Baptist & Reformed traditions of belief through my first five+ decades of life and only lately became aware of a shift within my faith tradition though I had felt it for years. Even as far back as university.

A shift that had been rumbling in my soul for many decades but at the last was resurrecting in my heart and head even as I was trying to ignore it as I concentrated on business, raising kids, being seriously active in community, school boards, public and civic commissions, youth rec, and adult sports.

When the Lord called me to begin a very broad and deep personal transformation from classicism to process Christianity it was something I withstood for a number of months.

And now, when I listen to Norman Geisler debate John Cobb I no longer can hear Geisler's theistic arguments knowing how far astray they have gone from declaring the biblical faith as set in the Hebrew, and later, Greek Scriptures as Jesus and the prophets had at one time perceived them.

And while I now better understand, and can appreciate Cobb's responses, to the many dodges and false trails of Geisler's beliefs as he obstinately upheld a Christian tradition, these same arguments bounce around today from pulpit to pulpit unwilling to listen and learn for fear God and the gospel of Christ will be lost.

Let me just say, from my personal experience as one who was once sympathetic to these apologies, that God was never lost or outgrown. If anything, God is larger, more relevant, and more amazing in every aspect of His Triune being even as my Christology has found a firmer footing from a metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, and theological basis. Nothing was lost but my unbiblical ideas of the bible and God.

And there's the rub, and the challenge. I fully understand it and do confess a sensibly trained Christian cannot approach process theology without a willingness to let go and let God. But I will have you also know, I can preach the bible as I was taught without losing an ounce of God or God's Word.

Epistemologically, its not like relocating the football field's goalposts. It's more like relocating the entire football field and then abandoning it altogether. And while this is done, to reinvent an entirely new game and then disuse that as well. When the bastions of our personal foundations are uplifted and destroyed its like having to start over again but without actually starting over. Just rethinking what you've heard and placing it into a more proper, godly, salvific context. At least that was how I experienced it.

Lastly, let me share my "conversation with God" when He called me to this task. I took it very seriously and really didn't want anything to do with it. Here it goes:

God, "Hi. Let's talk. I need your help. Let's take up this thing called emergent Christianity and run with it a bit. See where it leads. My emergent/progressive servants are enlivening the Faith again by shaking it from its anomalies and foibles. It's time we take this a step or two further. Can you help Me?"

Me, "Lord, No, I cannot. I've been out of lay ministry for quite a while now and was never formally active in it to begin with though I have an M.Div. degree. Use your own ministers and pastors here in Bible Belt, USA. They're familiar with Scriptures. They like to shout and state their hard-headed opinions. And they've become their own public institutions which your people will listen too. PLUS, I have confidence in them! I am not qualified."

The Lord, "Yes, yes, yes, but it's you I want, not them."

But Lord, "Please, give this burden to someone else! I am not fit for such a task!"

Yahweh, "Funny you should mention that... I've heard this line several times before."

Me, "Sheesh, Lord! Really?! You're going to play the guilt-trip card?! Do you realize I'll lose all my Christian friends, probably my family too, and have no church in town to fellowship with once Rob Bell and the emergent crew are scrubbed out by my well meaning, officious church brethern."

El Shaddai, "Rob bore his burden as well as he could. You saw him suffer for My name as he tried to speak of ME in ways people, both saved and unsaved, could hear. But I need a few more men and women soldiers. Now take up my mantle and speak My Love into a religious world which no longer can see or hear ME."

Me, "Thanks Lord. It'd be a deep privilege but this will be an absolute disaster. My heavy heart is already broken and certainly needs repair. Perhaps, maybe, this is the thing to help me get re-righted again."

Jesus, "Ah, Hey! Nice seeing you and Abba and talking this out! Great! You and my Father will get along just fine but first, one thing.

Me, "Oh, hey. Hi. I'm afraid to ask what this one thing might be?"

Jesus, "Nothing hard really. The very first thing you'll need to do is to learn to unlearn in order to relearn from my Father and I. Our Comforter will lead and guide you along your way. Ta Ta. And thanks again!"

The first thing you'll have to do is to learn to unlearn to relearn. Let's begin there."

And with that, God abandoned me after calling me. His Spirit then led me into a very dark, very lonely, wilderness which didn't end until it needed to be ended. Throughout my abandonment God was not with me. I was very much in a black pit and felt forsaken. And there I stayed refusing to leave until the job was done.

Paradoxically, though I felt keenly God's absence He curiously left His Spirit as guide and mentor. I know, I know, the One is the same as the Other but semantically, in my classical tradition, this is how I felt.

And with that my journey began. Out of the church and into a large wilderness of doubt and uncertainty where no one else could go but me. With no help from no one and nowhere to turn. My burden was mine alone.

Even so Lord, thank you for this privilege - as ill timed, unwanted, and without any good outcome as it felt and came to be. In hindsight it was what needed to be done.

R.E. Slater

November 12, 2021

*I'll continue Part 2 when I begin to list out the pros and cons of the debate I am leaving below. Unfortunately, it sounds like it cut out at the end where it was really beginning to get interesting. For now, give a listen, and list out the things which really are "faith-breakers for you." I made my own list up many, many years ago. And though I never set out to solve this list, it eventually began to sort itself out as the years rolled by. Which is why I've put a lot of effort into Relevancy22. It's for people asking questions and looking for direction. For myself, I have found process faith a very helpful foundation for my Baptist-Reformed tradition to be set upon. It has made this faith heritage much, much more meaningful. For others, maybe not. But once the Lord taught me there is never any reason to go backwards - only forwards - it simply has made sense to go forwards in this way. But to get there it only took the dismantling of my Jesus-Creed faith; you know, "No big deal."

Process Theology Debate:

Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb

Posted: Aug 21, 2021

De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of

classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic system putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as process thought itself that aren't there. Pleases note: Part 2 is not on the youtube video nor could I locate it anywhere except here as linked below." - R.E. Slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism

"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the strange, panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.

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