Quotes & Sayings


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 off 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 Commentary - Marjorie Suchocki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Marjorie Suchocki. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

R.E. Slater - Process Christianity & Questions of Faith

https://cobb.institute/

Process Christianity & Questions of Faith

by R.E. Slater

Whitehead's background was an unusual one for a speculative philosopher. Educated as a mathematician, he became, through his coauthorship with his student and disciple Bertrand Russell and publication in 1913 of Principia Mathematica, a major logician. Later he wrote extensively on physics and its philosophy, proposing a theory of gravity in Minkowski space as a logically possible alternative to Einstein's general theory of relativity. Whitehead's Process and Reality[1] is perhaps his philosophical master work. - Wikipedia

After arriving home yesterday from a two week vacation I went out to coffee the next morning to meet with some friends. At the cafe I stopped to say hello to two casual acquaintances whom I see a lot but made the mistake of being too honest answering their questions. It began innocently enough and went something like this:

[Me] Good Morning [to a Christian couple].
[Couple] Good Morning. Why aren't you at the Christian College's special breakfast this morning?
[Me] Yeah. Thought about it. Even got a personal invite yesterday, which was nice; but wanted to meet up with my friends at the cafe here whom I haven't seen in a couple of weeks. I guess, bad timing, eh?
[Couple] Any special reason for not going?
[It was here I missed the impending judgment coming my way... ]
[Me] Yeah. I've been going to the college's educational classes for the past ten years taking about 4-8 classes a term and have been active across several of their committees. So, taking a break. Probably missed a great breakfast.
[Couple] Oh. Why?
[Now I am picking up on their line of questioning and threw an anchor into the conversation to end it. But they wouldn't let it go... ] 
[Me] After sixty+ classes across a wide diversity of subjects I wanted to see more process-based instruction than the college's Calvinistic interpretation of the bible, history, literature, art, economics, and such like.
[Couple] Oh. What's "process?"
[Me] Process thought. Or, process philosophy and theology. From Whitehead.
[Couple] Who? Whitehall?
[Me] No. Whitehead.
[Couple] Never heart of him.
[Me] Most people haven't (trying to end the conversation).
[Couple] How is he connected to Christianity?
[Me] He's more of a (quantum-based) Philosopher looking to redact Rene Descartes and post-enlightenment science by bringing back Hegel in an updated form. Whitehead proposed a way of looking at God, the bible, and life in general, in an organic, connective, relational, and open way using the lenses of love, peace, and hope.
[Couple] Oh... How is that different from regular bible teaching?
[They've decided they've had enough and are beginning to close down] 
[Me] It can be deeply meaningful for many Christian faiths and religions. But, here, at the college, they prefer Calvinism and do not wish to think about any other approaches. I find process thought very helpful for today's Christianity in a number of ways.
[Couple] Oh. Well, that's your opinion....
[An awkward silence ensues telling me our conversation has ended...]
[Me] Hey, thanks for asking. Have a great morning.

A Heaven Sent Spirit Calling

I've had countless discussions like these in one form or another and know quite well that very few Christians - from the groups I've been involved with - never wish to question their faith nor admit some form of lack in their theology.

For myself, not so many years ago, the Lord brought down the hammer and broke the centers of my belief into pieces. And I was glad for it.

I was a trained M.Div. theologian with years and years of intense learning from the best teachers I could find; while also teaching, pastoring, and ministering extensively as a lay person to youth and adults for many more years. But yet, I was dissatisfied and tge Spirit of the Lord was troubling my heart.

This experience was no mere "opinion". It was a divine shaking out which I yearned for when asking questions of my tradition it could not answer in ways I needed to hear.

It was also a profoundly dark time and one which I was glad to be experiencing. Where I was spiritually needed deliverance. And this the Lord did with finality...
"BOOM! I was suddenly and violently out on my own and there would be no fellowship nor help in this dark, empty place. All that I knew, and had believed, came smashing down and burned up. Only the smoking ruins of my brokenness were left."
Nor did I have any wish to leave after a week, a month, or many months. I wasn't leaving my divine retreat, or wilderness, until the Spirit called me back to the Christian faith. A faith I was being prepared to break and rebuild much as I had been.

It was a task I did not want. I was empty and the task ahead was too hard. Too vast. Too demanding. It would require an examination and rewrite of everything calling itself faith, belief, witness, and testimony. 

But when the Lord finally released me from this deep pit I felt freed from my unrest and filled with vision and hope again. I was being sent forth "to learn to unlearn that I might relearn" and present my faith as a much broader version of itself than it was observing.

At that moment I knew where I was going and had some sense of what must be done but without having any of my questions answered. Those answers would come with my next several phases of spirit growth (I call them phases I, II, III, and IV, which is my present process phase).

The Lord was with me; He had given to me a strong discontent over my present situation; and said "Rebuild" even as he did to Noah, Abram, David, the Prophets, Jesus, the Disciples, and Paul. "REBUILD!"

This is what I heard and was very glad to do so. And I hope to always be rebuilding upon the cornerstone and foundation of Jesus Christ and the Love of God. It was never a personal "opinion" but a personal breaking and submittal to harder tasks ahead. 


The More Common Story of Christians and their Faith

Other Christians, like myself, who are curious, who have longed to find a loving God in their Christian faith, have likewise had to deconstruct their own Christian traditions in order to rebuild it again in a better version of Jesus' love. In essence, to rebuild, or reconstruct, a new Christian theology of love.

This is the story of Tripp and Marjorie shared in the podcast below.

If you are going through some very deep questions know you are in - and have been in - very good company. We can go back to Martin Luther and his 95 articles of discontent with his church. Or, to John Bunyan of Pilgrim's Progress or the phenomenal Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon whose autobiography is filled with questions and searchings and discontent with the Christian faith.

Today, it appears to be Process Christians who are seeking a better faith and more becoming way to live out faith than the hide-bound (Trumpian) Christianity some 2,000 years in the making (under differing names and eras). An institue bearing deeply unhelpful Church dogmas and teachings of Christian legalism; cosmic determinism; the oppression of non-Christians including it's "Christian" judgments upon other faiths in not-very-good-ways; all of which spins towards Christians making idols of God through pictures of their own corruptible selves.

Process destroys all of this. It removes it and destroys all past worthless, unChrist-like Christian traditions, creeds, and dogmas by saying,
"This isn't working. It never has worked. It never will work. It's time for a change. Keep the good stuff and throw out the bad. Let's start again knowing what we know by bringing love into the center of the Christian faith. God is love. Jesus was God's love. Let's become that love against the un-love we haven't been showing in our church polities, policies, teachings, and public addresses and behaviors."
And so, rather than looking for a new hermeneutic to interpret the bible... Or, properly repenting of not loving others as God showed to us through Christ... A new form of Christianity has risen to undo the past and help God's children course-correct in their lives and faiths, their witness and testimonies.

Process Christians thereby are addressing the elephant-in-the-room... they are removing the non-Christian, Greek/Westernized philosophies supporting such things as Calvinistic Christian theologies. It says we need better biblical foundations to build upon using more profound and better situated philosophical-theologies..
Theologies which are organic. Connective. Relational. Open. Loving. Peaceful. And Hopeful.
And instead of ending Spirit-sent discussions in our minds, hearts and spirits by not wishing to think about them anymore than we have to... or by finding other voices denouncing process Christianity in favor of supporting our own traditionally closed theologies... let's keep conversations alive and become more open in our souls to asking sincere questions not intended to judge people and make them feel stupid.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater
April 25, 2023

I hope you find this discussion helpful and enlightening.
Marjorie Suchocki is of a great age along with several other
process scholars such as John Cobb. These heavenly
treasures are still bearing testimony to the God of Love.
May we do as well. - re slater


Homebrewed Christianity w/ Dr. Tripp Fuller
and Marjorie Suchocki



Process and Reality

Process and Reality

Process and Reality is a book by Alfred North Whitehead, in which the author propounds a philosophy of organism, also called process philosophy. The book, published in 1929, is a revision of the Gifford Lectures he gave in 1927–28.

We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions. Such a change of thought is the shift from materialism to Organic Realism, as a basic idea of physical science.

— Process and Reality, 1929, p. 471.

Whitehead's Process and Reality

Whitehead's background was an unusual one for a speculative philosopher. Educated as a mathematician, he became, through his coauthorship with his student and disciple Bertrand Russell and publication in 1913 of Principia Mathematica, a major logician. Later he wrote extensively on physics and its philosophy, proposing a theory of gravity in Minkowski space as a logically possible alternative to Einstein's general theory of relativity. Whitehead's Process and Reality[1] is perhaps his philosophical master work.

The following is an attempt to provide an accessible outline of some of the main ideas in Whitehead's Process and Reality, based on the book itself, but guided by a general reading of secondary sources, especially I. Leclerc's Whitehead's Metaphysics. An Introductory Exposition.[2] Whitehead often speaks of the metaphysics of Process and Reality as 'the philosophy of organism'.

The cosmology elaborated in Process and Reality posits an ontology based on the two kinds of existence of entity, that of actual entity and that of abstract entity or abstraction.

The ultimate abstract principle of actual existence for Whitehead is creativity. Actual existence is a process of becoming, and “'becoming' is a creative advance into novelty”.[3] It is manifest in what can be called 'singular causality'. This term may be contrasted with 'nomic causality'. An example of singular causation is that I woke this morning because my alarm clock rang. An example of nomic causation is that alarm clocks generally wake people in the morning. Aristotle recognises singular causality as efficient causality. For Whitehead, there are many contributory singular causes for an event. A further contributory singular cause of my being awoken by my alarm clock this morning was that I was lying asleep near it until it rang.

An actual entity is a general philosophical term for an utterly determinate and completely concrete individual particular of the actually existing world or universe of changeable entities considered in terms of singular causality, about which categorical statements can be made. Whitehead's most far-reaching and profound and radical contribution to metaphysics is his invention of a better way of choosing the actual entities. Whitehead chooses a way of defining the actual entities that makes them all alike, qua actual entities, with a single exception, God.

For example, for Aristotle, the actual entities were the substances, such as Socrates (a particular citizen of Athens) and Bucephalus (a particular horse belonging to Alexander the Great). Besides Aristotle's ontology of substances, another example of an ontology that posits actual entities is in Leibnizmonads, said to be 'windowless'.

Whitehead's actual entities

For Whitehead, the actual entities exist as the only foundational elements of reality, the ultimately existing facts of the world. Nothing "either in fact or in efficacy"[4] underlies or lies beyond the actual entities; rather they underlie all reality.[5]

The actual entities are of two kinds, temporal and atemporal.

With one exception, all actual entities for Whitehead are temporal and are occasions of experience (which are not to be confused with consciousness, or with mere subjectivity). This 'actual entity' idea is most distinctly characteristic of the metaphysics of Process and Reality, and requires of the newly approaching reader a philosophically unprejudiced approach. An entity that people commonly think of as a simple concrete object, or that Aristotle would think of as a substance – a human being included – is in this ontology considered to be a composite of indefinitely many occasions of experience.

The one exceptional actual entity is at once temporal and atemporal: God. He is objectively immortal, as well as being immanent in the world. He is objectified in each temporal actual entity; but He is not an eternal object. Whitehead uses the term 'actual occasion' to refer only to purely temporal actual entities, those other than God.[6]

The occasions of experience are of four grades. The first comprises processes in a physical vacuum such as the propagation of an electromagnetic wave or gravitational influence across empty space. The occasions of experience of the second grade involve just inanimate matter. The occasions of experience of the third grade involve living organisms. Occasions of experience of the fourth grade involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy, which means more or less what are often called the qualia of subjective experience. So far as we know, experience in the mode of presentational immediacy occurs in only more evolved animals. That some occasions of experience involve experience in the mode of presentational immediacy is the one and only reason why Whitehead makes the occasions of experience his actual entities; for the actual entities must be of the ultimately general kind. Consequently, it is inessential that an occasion of experience have an aspect in the mode of presentational immediacy; occasions in the grades one, two, and three lack that aspect. The highest grade of experience "is to be identified with the canalized importance of free conceptual functionings".[7]

There is no mind-matter duality in this ontology, because "mind" is simply seen as an abstraction from an occasion of experience which has also a material aspect, which is of course simply another abstraction from it; thus the mental and the material aspects are abstractions from one and the same concrete occasion of experience. The brain is part of the body, both being abstractions of a kind known as persistent physical objects, neither being actual entities. Though not recognised by Aristotle, there is biological evidence, written about by Galen,[8] that the human brain is an essential seat of human experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. We may say that the brain has a material and a mental aspect, all three being abstractions from their indefinitely many constitutive occasions of experience, which are actual entities.[9]

Inherent in each actual entity is its respective dimension of time. Potentially, each occasion of experience is causally consequential on every other occasion of experience that precedes it in time, and has as its causal consequences every other occasion of experience that follows; thus it has been said that Whitehead's occasions of experience are 'all window', in contrast to Leibniz's 'windowless' monads. In time defined relative to it, each occasion of experience is causally influenced by prior occasions of experiences, and causally influences future occasions of experience. An occasion of experience consists of a process of prehending other occasions of experience, reacting to them.

The causal outcomes obey the usual well-respected rule that the causes precede the effects in time. Some pairs of processes cannot be connected by cause-and-effect relations, and they are said to be spatially separated. This is in perfect agreement with the viewpoint of the Einstein theory of special relativity and with the Minkowski geometry of spacetime.[10] It is clear that Whitehead respected these ideas, as may be seen for example in his 1919 book An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge[11] as well as in Process and Reality. Time in this view is relative to an inertial reference frame, different reference frames defining different versions of time.

The actual entity, the occasion of experience, is logically atomic in the sense that it cannot be cut and separated into two other occasions of experience. This kind of logical atomicity is perfectly compatible with indefinitely many spatiotemporal overlaps of occasions of experience. One can explain this atomicity by saying that an occasion of experience has an internal causal structure that could not be reproduced in each of the two complementary sections into which it might be cut. Nevertheless, an actual entity can completely contain indefinitely many other actual entities.[12]

Whitehead's theory of extension concerns the spatio-temporal features of his occasions of experience. Fundamental to both Newtonian and to quantum theoretical mechanics is the concept of velocity. The measurement of a velocity requires a finite spatiotemporal extent. Because it has no finite spatiotemporal extent, a single point of Minkowski space cannot be an occasion of experience, but is an abstraction from an infinite set of overlapping or contained occasions of experience, as explained in Process and Reality.[1] Though the occasions of experience are atomic, they are not necessarily separate in extension, spatiotemporally, from one another. Indefinitely many occasions of experience can overlap in Minkowski space.

An example of a nexus of temporally overlapping occasions of experience is what Whitehead calls an enduring physical object, which corresponds closely with an Aristotelian substance. An enduring physical object temporally has an earliest and a last member. Every member (apart from the earliest) is a causal consequence of the earliest member of the nexus, and every member (apart from the last) of such a nexus is a causal antecedent of the last. There are indefinitely many other causal antecedents and consequences of the enduring physical object, which overlap, but are not members, of the nexus. No member of the nexus is spatially separate from any other member. Within the nexus are indefinitely many continuous streams of overlapping nexūs, each stream including the earliest and the last member of the enduring physical object. Thus an enduring physical object, like an Aristotelian substance, undergoes changes and adventures during the course of its existence.[13]

Another aspect of the atomicity of occasions of experience is that they do not change. An actual entity is what it is. An occasion of experience can be described as a process of change, but is itself unchangeable.[14]

Whitehead's abstractions

Whitehead's abstractions are conceptual entities that are abstracted from or derived from and founded upon his actual entities. Abstractions are themselves not actual entities, but are the only entities that can be real.

An abstraction is a conceptual entity that involves more than one single actual entity. Whitehead's ontology refers to importantly structured collections of actual entities as nexuses of actual entities. Collection of actual entities into a nexus emphasises some aspect of those entities, and that emphasis is an abstraction, because it means that some aspects of the actual entities are emphasised or dragged away from their actuality, while other aspects are de-emphasised.

Whitehead admitted indefinitely many eternal objects. An example of an eternal object is a number, such as the number 'two'. Whitehead held that eternal objects are abstractions of a very high degree. Many abstractions, including eternal objects, are potential ingredients of processes.

Relation between actual entities and abstractions stated in the ontological principle

For Whitehead, besides its temporal generation by the actual entities which are its contributory causes, a process may be considered as a concrescence of abstract ingredient eternal objects. God enters into every temporal actual entity.

Whitehead's ontological principle is that whatever reality pertains to an abstraction is derived from the actual entities upon which it is founded or of which it is comprised.[15]

A source of an aphorism

The book is also the source of the frequently heard aphoristic reference to Western philosophy all being “footnotes to Plato":

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

— Process and Reality, Free Press, 1978, p. 39.

Publication data

The several originally published editions of Process and Reality were from New York and from Cambridge UK. There were many textual errors, partly due to Whitehead's imperfect handwriting and lack of interest in proof-reading. A largely corrected scholarly redaction was eventually prepared and published as Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929). 1979 corrected edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, Free Press, ISBN 0-02-934570-7.

See also

References

  1. Jump up to:a b Whitehead, A.N. (1929). Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927–1928, Macmillan, New York, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
  2. ^ Leclerc, I. (1958). Whitehead's Metaphysics. An Introductory Exposition, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, and Macmillan, New York.
  3. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 42.
  4. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 64.
  5. ^ Whitehead (1929) pp. 41, 116.
  6. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 135.
  7. ^ Whitehead (1929) pp. 269–270.
  8. ^ Siegel, R.E. (1973). Galen: On Psychology, Psychopathology, and Function and Diseases of the Nervous System. An Analysis of his Doctrines, Observations, and Experiments, Karger, Basel, ISBN 978-3-8055-1479-8.
  9. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 114.
  10. ^ Naber, G.L. (1992). The Geometry of Minkowski Spacetime. An Introduction to the Mathematics of the Special Theory of Relativity, Springer, New York, ISBN 978-0-387-97848-2
  11. ^ Whitehead, A.N. (1919). An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
  12. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 195.
  13. ^ Whitehead (1929) pp. 52, 87, 285.
  14. ^ Whitehead (1929) p. 52.
  15. ^ Whitehead (1929) pp. 48, 64,68.

Secondary literature

External links



Friday, July 15, 2022

Marjorie H. Suchocki - Prayer in Troubling Times, A Process Perspective




Marjorie H. Suchocki - Prayer in Troubling Times,
A Process Perspective, 2010
Feb 9, 2021


Marjorie Suchocki discusses the place and relevance of prayer in process perspective. Through personal narrative and concrete examples, she addresses the challenge of God's activity in the face of truly troubling times. Arguing against the notion that there is a God "up there" to which we pray, Suchocki expounds the fundamental conviction of process theology: God is immanently present to all things and in attentive relationship to all contextual experience. The immanence of God is not coercive, but pervasive and persuasive, constantly adjusting experience to the Good. This framework, Suchocki argues, opens up a new way of understanding how prayer influences God and the world in relation to what is possible for both.


(click to enlarge)



Books by Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki













Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

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Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (born 1933) is an author and United Methodist professor emerita of theology at Claremont School of Theology. She is also co-director of the Center for Process Studies at Claremont.

Suchocki earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Pomona College in 1970 and both Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in religion from Claremont Graduate School in 1974. She taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary from 1977 to 1983. From 1983 to 1990 she was professor of systematic theology and dean of Wesley Theological Seminary. In 1990 Suchocki returned to Claremont School of Theology, where she held the endowed Ingraham chair in theology and joint appointment at the Claremont Graduate School until her retirement in 2002. She has held visiting professorships at Vanderbilt University in 1996 and 1999, and at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1992.

Since 2001 Suchocki has been director of the Whitehead International Film Festival. She is considered along with John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin as one of the leaders in the field of process theology.

Books

  • God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, Crossroad, 1982 (227 p.), ISBN 0-8245-0464-X, revised ed. 1989 (263 p.): ISBN 0-8245-0970-6
  • The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context, State University of New York Press, 1988, ISBN 0-88706-724-7
  • The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology, Continuum International, 1995, ISBN 0-8264-0860-5
  • Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God, (coeditor with Joseph A. Bracken), Continuum International, 1996, ISBN 0-8264-0878-8
  • In God's Presence: Theological Reflections on Prayer, Chalice Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8272-1615-7
  • The Whispered Word: A Theology of Preaching, Chalice Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8272-4239-5
  • Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism, Abingdon Press, 2003, ISBN 0-687-02194-4

External links