The Processual Complex Memory of the Universe Is Significant for Cosmic Life

I'll provide the video meeting and transcript later... for now this is John Cobb's treatise towards living in unity with difference and stating that the universe/creation does have a teleology unlike what most evolutionary theories state. That in process thought evolution's theology is purposeful, meaningful, and processually forming... it is not a dead thing but a complexly living organism. And for the Christian, we may equate this evolving teleology to the God of Love and Self Expression who has embedded God's Self into God's creation.

R.E. Slater

November 14, 2023

Partners in Process, use the link below to join us for Tuesday's conversation with John Cobb & Friends!

November 14, 2023. David Bartosch. Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life: A Conversation with Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr. on a Burning Question of Our Time.

A January, 2022, conversation of John Cobb, David Bartosch, and other international scholars has resulted in a book edited by David Bartosch, Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life (Singapore: Springer, August, 2023). Co-editors are Hungarian Attila Grandpierre and Chinese Bei Peng.) Bartosch considers John Cobb's introductory chapter to be a classic text, which clearly creates the foundations of consciousness for a peaceful and long-term sustainable planetary civilization. His discussion with John Cobb about that chapter is the "main act" in today's conversation. Bartosch's own chapter on the idea of a transcultural and poly-contextual perspective on "cosmic life" relates to John's chapter and how it is inspired by John's pluralistic and transcultural approach to philosophy and science.

Dr. Bartosch is a German philosopher currently working as a distinguished research fellow at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai in South China. He conducts research in the field of transcultural comparative philosophy, especially in the comparison of European and Chinese philosophical traditions, as well as in German philosophy. He has broad interests in various contemporary topics of general interest. For example, Bartosch is currently preparing a book on long-term sustainability for publication. He was a Cobb & Friends presenter on April 12, 2022. He discusses why a German scholar finds inspiration in ancient Chinese philosophy in brief excerpts from this television interview. A list of his publications can be found here: https://philpeople.org/profiles/david-bartosch.

amazon link

Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life: New Discussions and Interdisciplinary Views Kindle Editionby David Bartosch (Editor), Attila Grandpierre (Editor), & 1 more

Format: Kindle Edition $28.22 - $109.00 | Read with our free app
Hardcover - $114.76

ISBN(s) - 9789819921300

DOI - 10.1007/978-981-99-2131-7

Categories

• Causation in Metaphysics
• Global Metaphysical Theories in MetaphysicsHistory of Western Philosophy
• Meta-Ethics
• Metaontology in Metaphysics
• Metaphysics, Miscellaneous in Metaphysics
• Ontology in Metaphysics
• Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
• Philosophy of Biology
• Philosophy of Physical Science

Keywords

• Life
• Cosmic life
• Life principle
• Pre-life
• Super-life
• Life Itself
• World philosophy
• Poly-contexturality
• Transcultural philosophy
• Process philosophy Panspermia

Just as the six branches of a snow crystal converge in regular proportions toward their common center, the six contributions to this book point toward a future philosophy of cosmic life. In this sense, this edited volume represents a multidisciplinary and transcultural polylogue of distinguished authors from three continents, which aims to establish highly innovative perspectives and open new frontiers of developing philosophical reflections and scientific foundations for the emergence of a common cosmic consciousness, for an integral ecology, and for a cooperative planetary civilization of humanity.

John B. Cobb, Jr. uses a process-philosophical foundation to describe life as living events expressing novelty and the cosmos as a process of self-enriching and self-evolving “Life Itself.” Chandra Wickramasinghe unfolds his scientific and philosophical perspective on cosmic life in twelve successive steps, offering a wide range of arguments and insights that support an up-to-date theory of panspermia. Attila Grandpierre presents the "Cosmic Life Principle" and the comprehensive science based upon it that is inextricably linked to the healthy and cooperative civilization, to the biological laws of nature, to the laws of logic, to the uplifting of the well-being of people and ecological communities. Chunyou Yan introduces the approach of his holographic philosophy, according to which the universe must be understood as a vast living entity, every aspect of which represents life. Bei Peng shows that the proportions of energy meridians in traditional Chinese medicine correspond to musical intervals, and on this basis she demonstrates the analogy of the human body to macrocosmic phenomena. David Bartosch offers an examination of three important systematic foundations for a poly-contextural, transcultural philosophy of cosmic life with roots in Greek, Chinese, South and West Asian, and European traditions of thought.

Titles by David Bartosch

• Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life: New Discussions and Interdisciplinary Views.David Bartosch, Attila Grandpierre & Bei Peng (eds.) - 2023 - Singapore: Springer Nature.

• Poly-contextural Cornerstones for a Transcultural Philosophy of Cosmic Life.David Bartosch - 2023 - In David Bartosch, Attila Grandpierre & Bei Peng (eds.)

• Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life: New Discussions and Interdisciplinary Views. Singapore: Springer Nature. pp. 123-186.

Introduction

Related Link - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-99-2131-7

by David Bartosch,Attila Grandpierre & Bei Peng

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

This introductory chapter to the book Towards a Philosophy of Cosmic Life: New Discussions and Interdisciplinary Views provides an overview on a multidisciplinary, multitheoretical, and transcultural dialogue among six authors from three continents. The aim of this discourse is to establish highly innovative perspectives and to explore new frontiers for the development of philosophical reflections and scientific foundations for the emergence of a common cosmic consciousness, an integral ecology, and a cooperative planetary civilization of humanity. The chapter includes brief profiles of the authors and chapter summaries. The golden thread running through the spectrum of ideas and points of view outlined here is provided by the underlying view that life is not an accidental emergence in an otherwise exanimate infinity, but an expression or manifestation of a self-unfolding cosmic life principle, namely as an implicit but central and general factor in the formation of everything.

Cosmic Life

by John B. Cobb, Jr.

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

The present contribution is a new text which has been written under the impression of more than seventy years of active dedication to the innovative development of process philosophy. In this context, the topic of cosmic life is of utmost importance. In view of this, new terrain is explored here. The first main segment presents the view of life as living events, that is, as living processes which express the feature of novelty. The author argues against the paradigmatic, and highly problematic, physicalist reduction of physics and life. In a second step, the whole cosmos is defined as Life Itself. One of the guiding questions is: Does the past exist? Furthermore, the factors of decision-making and of potentiality are discussed in relation to this. In a third step, the whole cosmos is described as a process of Life Itself, which is to be reflected as self-enriching and self-evolving in all its parts. In the form of an inner ideal, the (practical) force of Life Itself provides personal guidance in all of our daily or uncommon tasks and aspirations.

Admitting Our Inalienable Links with the Cosmos

by Chandra Wickramasinghe

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

This chapter traces the progress of studies spanning many scientific disciplines and more than forty years of research. They all converge on the conclusion that life is a cosmic phenomenon. A comprehensive perspective on this field of scientific and philosophical knowledge is provided in twelve basic steps. Starting with the fact of the complex organic nature of interstellar dust, the author reflects on the implications of accepting the concept of cosmic life. He also considers the subject of exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life. The author then turns to the panspermia theory, which he has been instrumental in reviving and developing significantly since the 1970s. He argues for the cosmic origin of life using probability calculations and then discusses the direct spectroscopic evidence and other geological evidence for panspermia. The distribution of habitable exoplanets and the possibility of interplanetary transfer of life forms are discussed. This is complemented by the history of the research into meteorites, micrometeorites and cometary bacteria. Recent relevant studies on the controversial Polonnaruwa Meteorite are considered. With regard to panspermia, stratospheric sampling and the idea of diseases and pandemics from space are presented as important areas of existing and future research.

The Cosmic Life Instinct Points the Way to a Healthy Ecological Civilization

by Attila Grandpierre

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

Ervin Bauer formulated the most promising version of general theoretical biology in a mathematical form. He derived all the basic biological equations from a single fundamental principle, which is known as the Bauer principle. As this principle tells us, living organisms actively and continuously mobilize their free energy content to maximize their distance from lethal thermodynamic equilibrium. Although, for historical reasons, very few people know this principle, and even fewer recognize its power that originates from the fact that it transcends the framework of physics, this universal life principle represents a significant advance in our understanding of the structure and nature of the Universe, even more than the Copernican turn. This comprehensively life-centered worldview unites our physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects. It is also comprehensive in unifying individual, communal, and cosmic life. It offers an unexpectedly profound scientific basis for a cosmic ecology respecting all life forms, including the Living Universe. It offers new perspectives for our conduct of individual life as well as for good government and developing a healthy civilization.

Holographic Philosophy as a Philosophical Basis of Cosmic Life Theory

by Chunyou Yan

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

Holographic philosophy was first introduced in China during the 1980s. It was initially referred to as ‘theory of cosmic holography’ and later renamed ‘theory of cosmic holographic unity.’ Its main proposition is that parts contain all the information of the whole. In the first section of this chapter, the general process of the emergence of holographic philosophy in Chinese discourse is described. The second main section provides an analysis of the basic principles of holographic philosophy and points out its provability. The universe is a vast living entity, and every part of it also contains life, which is the inevitable conclusion of holographic philosophy. The third section provides further explanations regarding the principle of holographic philosophy. From this point of view, all things are to be considered as aspects of cosmic life at different stages of evolution, and they are all evolving towards higher states of life. In the fourth and final section, the high significance of the holographic theory is discussed in more detail and in terms of the whole–part relationship.

The Human Body as the Singing Universe

by Bei Peng

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

For millennia, the basic idea that there is a universal order that connects human beings and the universe has lived on in many cultures. This order has often been expressed in geometric or musical-harmonic terms. From Pythagoras to Kepler, universal scholars were firmly convinced that this order represented the primordial code of all things. This chapter explores a new interdisciplinary perspective that combines the fields of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), music theory, and Keplerian astronomical insights. By means of corresponding mathematical analyses, it is shown that the energy meridians of the human body correspond to a specific musical-harmonic order, which in turn is inextricably linked to certain relational aspects of the celestial bodies of our solar system. The study represents completely new discoveries in relation to this universal connection. In doing so, it also opens up new levels of understanding and provides new aspects for the further development of the concept of cosmic life.

Poly-contextural Cornerstones for a Transcultural Philosophy of Cosmic Life

by David Bartosch

Chapter First Online: 23 August 2023

Abstract

In this chapter, important transcultural and multi-civilizational foundations for a comprehensive philosophy of cosmic life are presented from a systematic and at the same time historical perspective. An “anacrusis” regarding the origin of the philosophical term ‘cosmic life’ is followed by systematic groundwork in relation to Gotthard Günther’s concepts of poly-contexturality and trans-classical science. These are extended and complemented by the views of other thinkers. Against this background, the new term ‘panenbiotism’ (“all-in-life-doctrine”) is introduced. Like ‘cosmic life,’ this term is then used as the basis for a transcultural comparative discussion of positions from ancient Hellenic and Chinese contexts, from South and West Asia, and from Europe. This discussion is organized in the form of three main sections which correspond to three basic themes concerning ‘cosmic life.’ Each of these is developed along the trajectories of related subtopics. In this sense, the first main section presents several views from various times and places in the context of which (cosmic) life is seen as an expressed principle of incessant self-(re)creation through metabolism and partial self-consumption. In the second main section, the transcultural comparative angle is applied to multiple perspectives and variations on the theme of cosmic life as an integral feature of a vast or infinite universe. Finally, the third main section presents family-resemblant views of cosmic life as an integral aspect of cosmic ‘light.’ This last section also links the discussion with some unorthodox and very innovative hypotheses of our time. The main thesis of this chapter is that a future philosophy of cosmic life must draw on a variety of philosophical traditions from different civilizations and, in a spirit of unrestricted openness, translate the ultimate inexhaustibility of all scientific endeavors into a more productive intellectual reality within the expanded scope of a new kind of trans-classical concept of science.

Process Teleology vs. Traditional Eschatology

Carl Jung

“Your Universe is in consciousness. And it’s a teleological process of unfolding patterns...The totality of your digital reality is what your conscious mind implicitly or explicitly chooses to experience out of the infinite.” ― Alex M. Vikoulov, Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality

Poet and Author Tennessee Williams

"Life is the perpetual destruction of innocence. If we are witness to this, and if we step forward and heal the wounds of this destruction, we become human; we might even become saintly. If we share what we've seen and learned, we may create art. To do nothing is to be utterly evil."-Tennessee Williams/Interview with James Grissom

"The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty." - Alfred North Whitehead, Process Metaphysician

Process Teleology vs. Traditional Eschatology

by R.E. Slater

I was asked this weekend at our annual college Christmas party by fellow Christians to support their version of a "biblical" eschatology and how that "biblical truth" might be the more meaningful for living out our Christian faith as [liberal progressivism] overtakes the traditional church in an Age of Conservative Evangelicalism.

Mentally, my silent response was, "Yeah for American liberal progressivism seeking legal and civil equalities and recognitions to 'the unwanted other's' civil rights!" As versus the main church's active denial of those same rights by my Christian friends whose persuasion was the same one I've listened to all my life in their evangelical church traditions justifying their beliefs based upon their obsequious literal readings of the bible. (I will speak more to how to read the bible a bit later in this post.)

And secondly, my enjoining muted response in which I offered no further answers except continued silent response to their statements and thus preventing a predictably imminent and virtual crucifixion by my Christian friends. To speak would simply excite them to dig in and not listen. There was no purpose in attempting any truth speaking to religiously attuned ears seeking justifying responses to their own. I simply made a wise crack to relieve the tension in the room and left.

However, what I wanted to say would have been more along the lines of what I will observe immediately below. I would've stated that the only human Armageddon to come in my Christian friend's expected eschatological schemes (sic, from select passages in Daniel, the OT Prophets, and the NT such as the book of Revelation) would be by their own hands. Not God's. Nor the devil's. That end time judgments have usually come by the hands of the church itself historically. But of course, they would've decried my assessment against their own beliefs based upon a lifetime of personal and congregations readings, discussions, educational classes, and the pulpit. There was no winning this debate.

I Was but Now Am

Years ago I had entertained the very thoughts my friend's held that night based on old-timey fundamentalist teleologies and later, new-line evangelical teleologies (sic, the eschatological doctrine of design and purpose by God for creation). I too would've denounced my present self and shown by chapter-and-verse from Genesis to Revelation how to construct a biblical eschatology based upon a Reformed Covenantal reading of the bible. In fact, my graduate capstone paper for M.Div. certification centered on biblical exegetical studies proposing eleven major themes of the bible... several of which dealt expressly with teleology though I could easily make the case that all those same bible themes did so in themselves. Now realize that I was centering on major themes of the bible back in the 1980s; today, I could easily add a few more based upon current church discussions.

In that capstone project I merged those eleven themes with one another and discussed in brief what was meant by such subject matter as salvific discontinuity and continuity between the Testaments; God's Promises through the covenantal eras; the maturation of the major OT/NT Covenants across time; the various typologies of the Christ to come (sic, Messianic Christology); the movement of Salvific History through time, and etc. All this effort was done in order to complete a fuller picture of the coming future of God's inbreak into end-time human history describing God's divine sovereignty as God moved with humanity from the Fall of Adam to the Resurrection of Christ to the Salvation of both World & Cosmos. This then was the picture of redemptive eschatology I was taught would come to fruition via the "I-Thou cooperative" between God and man.

Now I still believe in these elements but am now expanding them beyond their traditional Christian basis when I speak to the more centralizing ideas of God's love and immanence (intimate nearness) with creation while lessening, or removing all together, the traditional church's theologoumenas as they are reflected by it's doctrines and creeds. When doing this, I am purposely placing my former education and theologies into a "progressive form" of evangelicalism and/or church traditions.

But when taking this step, I am also attempting to remove from my vocabulary and cultural mindset my own Western Philosophical thoughts when replacing them (as I can) with Whitehead's Processual thought structures. Which means all the Greek Platonic (sic, Hellenaic) philosophic structures describing God and man in the NT bible - or the more organic Semitic philosophies of the OT, are lifted out and replaced by Processual philosophy. Which in itself is it's own organic philosophy attuned to more similar mindsets from the ancient past. That is, Whitehead was echoed by Hegel who was echoed by earlier Semitic and Greek philosophers against Westernization's philosopher's such as Plato, Aristotle, and the rest who won out.

Thus, Whiteheadian process thought is the latest encapsulation of the past which is winning-over my own yearning to re-express my Christian beliefs in fuller, more congruent tones, to today's arising ecological civilizations and perhaps be recapture in other indigenous cultures and religions. Over the years I have gone into some depth to express all this... here, is my shorthand for observed momentous change which I see occurring across all of life's many disciplines and socio-political and economic landscapes as they each become more attuned to God's creative processual design in nature and the stars.

As an example of difference think in terms of the Greek pantheon's many Gods led by Zeus in their uncaring, unloving, greatness and power. Their distance from the world and their easy judgment upon mankind. This I have abandoned and refuse to conjoin Israel's and Christianity's God with such worthless Greek gods. When I read the bible now I am re-expressing the Christian God in terms of love, care, grace, mercy, and nearness, while also recognizing that the bible's authors in the ancient past did not separate their thoughts of God from their socio-cultural contexts as we have learned to do since the Enlightenment eras of the more recent past. And though their worship was tweaked to behave more in line with love than judgment and cruelty, still it was not fully enough when viewing Israel's doctrinal embodiments by the Pharisees and Scribes of Jesus' day. Thus Jesus ministry of indiscriminant love to the unwanted, unsightly, invisible, and oppressed. As well as Jesus' harshest words and actions against who were designated as priests of Israel's God. Even so today the church struggles with separating it's ideas of God from who God really is even as the bible narrators did in the past. Our pride and legalisms, wont for separateness, exclusion and holy "apartness," has brought a profound reading of the bible into today's civilizations. But again, I have discussed this at length over the years.

Hence, to contextually read the bible, one must read it in its cultural conjectures and teachings just as you would earlier ancient literature and beliefs. Some is fraught with goodness. Some not. Some is muddled in complexities by their own presumptions. And some more easier to grasp. And there's the rub. The ideas of the ancient past no longer translate "biblically" to the today's postmodern (er, metamodern?) world. Yes, the age-old metaphysical questions are the same of "sin and evil, God and man, purpose and reason for living." But the ways we approach such subjects must not be constricted by out-of-date Platonic, Scholastic, Enlightened, Victorian, nor Newtonian thinking any longer. With the age of (processual) quantum physics and (processual) evolution has come Whitehead and his predecessor, Hegel's, ideas of processual movement in a world which is never static, nor mechanical, nor without its own kind of processual (rather than reductionistic) teleology. In fact, we live in a processual creation/cosmos and don't even recognize it. We might call them "circles or cycles of life" (aka Disney's Lion King) but in Whiteheadian thought we may go far deeper than such simplistic statements.

What is a Process Teleology?

To Whitehead as a cosmological metaphysician who also happened to be a Victorian Christian, he observed a cosmology (or universe, or creation, or world) which was organic in its construction. He thought of it much like we do our own bodies and self-reflections moving through a world of experiences. We were not automatons any more than the world of quantum physics was, though scientists ascribed Newtonian philosophies to it. Yet, they did not work.

Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism spoke to a deeply complex, organically relational world of every changing causes and effects, where a positive evolution could evolve against all negative mutating circumstances. In these, like the biblical prophets and writers of old we would agree. When a God of love has essentially and purposely created creation from God's Self we would expect a struggle between good and evil - especially when it was created with agency, or INDETERMINANT free will, buried deep within the DNA of divine LOVE. Not by fiat did agency spawn. No, but by Love.

In time, Whitehead's ideas took shape and the generations after him recast his Philosophy of Organism as a Philosophy of Process, or, Process Philosophy properly stated. And as a progressive evangelical leaving evangelical teachings will keeping the bible ideas of "Covenant" and "Teleology" in my brain, heart, and faith, it became necessary to abandon not God but the old-line teachings of my faith. It held - and still does to some extent when not participating in White Christian Nationalism and Supremacy - a lot of good in it from many different directions. But of late, it's gotten tangled up with itself and has forgotten there is only one God and not the gods of politics appearing to my mind as the Evil Ones in Revelation.

None the less, these were things I thought but really couldn't speak to my present audience of Christian friends. They simply would not understand. As evidence of this I spoke to one of those friends who showed an interest for a time but then began to mentally wander off even as those close to our discussion moved away and spoke amongst themselves on other things they were more interested in. It is what it is, as they say in the state of New York. And you can't unmake that which is already decided and made. The best I can do is write down my thoughts and share with those who, like myself, must find another way.

From Faith to Faith, said the Apostle Paul

Which brings me to this observation: As a process Christian all the old line systematic theologies I was taught to believe - by both (i) exegetical interpretation of the Scriptures in the original languages plus (ii) eisigetical expositions from those studies - can no longer comport with the church's 2000 year hoary tradition of Westernized Christianity.

In its place, I am updating my faith through a more rigorous process of processual expansionism removing core Analytic Philosophical Westernized elements by replacing them with newer, more relationally organic elements pertaining both to my faith and civic life as a citizen of a liberal democracy eschewing any-and-all forms of authoritarian doctrinnaires and racisms as shown by the conservative church with its willful involvements in white neo-facist supremacy politics.

(Which is curious, as at one time I wrote here on an Age of Authoritarianism as versus an Age of Cooperative Participation of global communities with one another. To build ecological societies the latter must win out in displays of liberally adapted geographic global democracies against tyrannical and despotic governments of one or many. However, my shorthand at present is just to state Metamodernistic which implies these socio-economic elements and more.)

And so, when I now exegetically study the collected interpretations of God-and-life-and-faith in their orally derived and ancient/past commentaries, narratives, and interpretaive storylines of God in Scripture, I now read of them as plain admissions to theistic faiths in transition just like our own faiths are in transition today. Each historical era - whether in bible times or after - are attempts to describe a divinely loving God in their era-specific ageisms of culturally folkloric ideations of God-and-life-and-faith. Especially of a God who in many ways is "wholly-unlike us" but also a God who is "wholly alike us" in many, many other ways.

So when I speak of God I lean into the process version of God's nearness, participation, and fellowship with us, the world, and nature as versus the Platonic-Greek Hellenaic traditions of transcendency, wrathful holiness, and divine powers which Western theology has chosen to follow with its evidentiary histories of oppression, racism, and crusading inquisitions.

A God of Love is not a God of Wrath. The wrath we think we see is the consequences of our choosing not to love one another or the world about us. When ascribing to God Wrath, and Judgment, and Hell we are but describing ourselves and placing these qualities upon God. Which is why, I feel, the biblical authors had a hard time telling who the real God was and versus who they thought God was. 

These same discussions go on today in faith commentaries, books, and postings. And since divine revelation is open and not closed (sic, only found in the bible) I feel its a valid position to take that when a misapprehension of God is taken then I may call it out even when collected into the Scriptures. The biblical narratives are simply yesterday's newspapers of faithful believers gone wrong in their faith beliefs.

Reading the Bible As It Was and Can Become

Firstly, I don't read from a revelationally closed Bible but from an inspirationally open Bible by which I mean God is always in communication with us today as God was back then in "biblical" times. Whether by God's Spirit or however we wish to ascribe it along Western theological formulas and syllogistic equations.

Next, I would prefer to think of God's communication in terms of communing with us much as a parent would with a child... or a friend to a friend. To speak to one another in imagined divine fiats is one thing, but to commune with one another in divine love is another. A communion which vouchsafes God's lifelong fellowship and deeply earthy relational communion with us, and the universe, in continually intimate terms. Not in terms of a God ensconced upon a heavenly throne coming-and-going according to God's good whim much like the Greek gods had in the ancient Greek imagination.

Too, I've been leaning deeply into the process theological paradigms which teach God's nearness to us at all times in our lives. God does not - nay, will not - leave us as my earlier faith taught when teaching of a loving God beheld in idolatrous admixtures of a judging-and-condemning God. Without necessarily denying the ancient Greek idea of God's far-ness from us vis-a-vis the church's Hellenistic teachings of transcendence, a pan-en-theistic (not pan-theistic nor classical theistic) process faith better describes a God who created creation as One with God's Self. Think of this as a four-point "trinity" but in this case "creation" is the salient fourth point on the fellowship circle of Father-Son-and-Spirit. This then would describe a God who has no intentions of abandoning us because God is the kind of God who has been, and always will be, deeply, intimately, in processual relationship with us and God's beloved creation.

And to the outmoded eschatological idea of leaving this earth for a better, non-earthly life in heaven while the world burns itself up by its own hands in Armageddon-like ecology gone bad. This Christian theology as found in the NT book of Revelation seems quite un-God-like to a process Christian metaphysician. To such churchly beliefs of a distant God's impugning judgments upon a wicked, wasted earth, I would say this....

"If the events in Revelation's narratives do come about they will be wrought by our own hands - not by God's loving hands whose love forewarned us of sin and evil when we do not love one another. Nor does God pile-on when sin and evil measures our "endtime" existence.

Rather, one might say such calamities come from a polluted earth which we have corrupted to the point of its cosmic devastation. A devastation which bears consequences to our neglecting care of the earth.

So rather than ascribing to the Christian faith a judging Nether-God raging down His wrath and Hell upon us, I simply read in Revelation of unloving man's complete failures across societies, nature, and even the heavens itself. Which of course is a very processual theology which describes consequences to sin and evil and to which classic church doctrines would say anathema to in their closed, interpretive readings of God and Scripture and churchly dominionism."

A Heavenly Communion Which Doesn't Stay in Heaven

Further, when thinking of a "biblical" eschatology of predicted things to come first know God cannot control outcomes in a world God designed as generatively good in value and structure. Divine love does not control... it but persuades listening, obedient hearts against the misuse of its own agency.

And secondly, life is a procession of processual events both good and bad. "What we sow we will reap." A Loving God can never sow evil nor respond to evil in unloving, non-restorative ways of redeeming reunion.

And thirdly, we must learn to expand our minds and hearts away from the church's traditionalized teachings. It's biblical eschatology is divinely unbiblical as I have shown. But it also creates a closed cosmos whose future state becomes trapped within its own static statism.

However, if we substitute the word teleology for eschatology we then have a fully, more correct picture of a processually "uncontrolled" divine future working to rebalance its inherently redemptive structure away from deathly structures to divinely implanted transformative and generatively good structures. Structures I would better describe as organically inbuilt evidencing a teleology of atoning relationships between creation itself and its panenthiestically immanent Godhead. We might call such survivability as evolution, but a processually-based and divinely enable evolution speaks to continuing creative and generatively good evolving relationships seeking merger within its many cosmological forms.

Conclusion - We Are Whom We Are Becoming

Our conclusion? A process-based Christianity is more than progressive in its assessment of the world. It is a wholly-other construction away from perverse and unhelpful teachings of the traditional church (think gay re-education; or refugees being shipped to unready communities).

In essence, we are trading in a Fire-and-Brimstone God for a God of Love. And to the sins and evils in this life we do not blame God for them but ourselves for not humbling ourselves before one another and seeking goodness and kindness, listening and learning. God is a God of grace, mercy and forgiveness. Creation's very own teleology is one of generative goodness and valuative operation. Albeit, on its own terms, much like we ourselves likewise blessed with agency, but inherent in nature, in us, even the universe, is the Imago Dei of God.

And lastly, it is in creation's very nature - even us, ourselves - to redeem and recreate all things towards redemption. Christ did this very same in God's atoning emancipation. It is how creation's designed to work by active insemination from one redemptive effect to another. Process describes this creation process as "A process of Being which is Becoming." That is, we are, and we may move forwards towards what we may fully become as we can in this life and its circumstances. Like God Who once said to Israel "I AM who I AM"... so too we may also say, "We Are whom We are Becoming to Be."

Blessings,

R.E. Slater

December 12, 2022

partially updated January 23, 2023

Divine Processual Synchronicity is How the World Works...

Divine Processual Synchronicity

Is How the World Works...

A Process Theology of Reality

as we know it and live it

by R.E. Slater

In the theology I've been developing over the years - most recently, process relational theology - I've added concepts which were foreign to my biblical training. One of these is what I call "divine processual synchronicity" (DPS).

Here, I extend the idea of a divine miracle to be a common, everyday, moment-by-moment experience of the would. Having read Mitch Albom's book on the five stones in the river, or William Powell's "Shack," (sic, the chapter entitled, "The Garden") or dozens of other titles old and new, it finally dawned on me that not only is our God everywhere present but also everywhere experiencing and reacting to not only ours, but creation's everywhere experience of the present.

DPS is different from the classic Calvinist idea of God "causing and directing" all things in that God doesn't cause or direct anything. Rather than saying God is "in control" it is more accurate to say God is participating with a wildly "out-of-control" freewill universe in all its chaotic, random, and consequential results in exercising the being of itself.

Synchronicity implies that the Creator God Redeemer does not abandon His creation but fully experiences and participates with it in every way possible by redirecting its urges and displays where possible towards beauty, benevolenvce, and generatively loving actions. This can occur when creation harkens to its Savior Redeemer's loving calls to learn to love and become love. It requires creational obedience in the theological arrangement described as the Divine-Human (sic creational) cooperative I here redescribe as the divine, processually evolving, experience and participation of God in our lives.

Synchronicity says we are not abandoned by God but have hope in evil and harm that God is with us, working about us as God can, and that even in death we are delivered from dark meaningless to processual goodness and beauty at its zenith. It extends the idea that God is 'with' us... not simply up there in the heavens judging and dealing out wrath... but genuinely, and lovingly, with us in the fullest of senses.

Without denying divine Otherness, or divine transcendence, DPS leans into divine immanence with extreme consequences - for a creation without a present and participating God is nonsense. But an uncontrolled - and uncontrollable - freewill creation WITH a present and participating God is a miracle. The kind which surprises, which can morph itself towards divine imagination and creativity, which utilizes the Imago Dei which is present everywhere in creation as its birthright. Which may redemptively re-enrgize a freewilled cosmos by God's more recent divine atonement in Jesus stating the obvious - that we were never alone nor would be left alone. That God is remaking the world, with the world's cooperative help, into become fully what it was meant to become rather than a future fireball aka dispensational teachings.

That is, God is spiritually healing a freewill creation to become what it inherently is having been birthed by God in God's Image and divine Self. Hans Christian Andersen, captured divine processual synchronicity perfectly by his simple phrase, "The whole world is a series of miracles but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things."

R.E. Slater

December 2, 2022

Questions for Open and Relational Theologians - Where is God for the Dying Giraffe?

We, in the open and relational process world, say that God is a loving presence in the universe, beckoning creatures on our planet, through a process of evolution, to a variety of forms of life, two of which are giraffes and crocodiles. Are-predator-prey relations a result of God's beckoning? Is it God's will that creatures eat one another? Why so much suffering? Is it truly reasonable to speak of a God of tender love, when there's so much violence? I struggle with this. Read the page and help me out.

Questions for Open and Relational Theologians

Divine love is pluriform: God loves in numerous ways to promote the well-being of people, other creatures, and all creation. - Thomas Oord

Where is God for the Dying Giraffe?

"It was a beautiful, peaceful day as I sat in a blind overlooking a small lake at the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Since this reserve is home to the Big Five, I was on high alert to see as many beautiful animals as possible. 

Nature did not disappoint, at least not at first. I had seen and shared space with a huge number of beautiful creatures as I sat munching on a sandwich and marveling at what I was experiencing. Soon, a gorgeous giraffe came up to quench its thirst. Since giraffes are so tall, they have to splay their front legs out quite far to lower their heads for a drink which makes them vulnerable. The spreading of their legs is a very gradual, slow, and deliberate process. And, once they are down, they cannot move quickly back to a standing and running position.

As this graceful giraffe began its drinking vigil, it became a victim of crocodiles. They were in hiding and surged up from the water bringing down this innocent animal who was simply trying to get a drink.

Needless to say, I was not only startled but bereft. The giraffe struggled and cried out. I wanted to help it but, of course, I could not. Nature was in process and I was only a witness. I had seen other kills like lions taking down a springbok or zebra, but there was something about this kill that overwhelmed me. The giraffe was so very vulnerable. It was not a fair fight or in any way merciful. It almost seemed like the crocodiles were taking delight in the suffering of their prey as it struggled to free itself from their grasp. Instead of just chomping the juggler, the crocs took turns maiming and drowning the giraffe as it cried out. I wanted to shout out to the mean crocs to let go!!!! My empathy for the giraffe and my dismay at the crocs' seeming cruelty did not save the giraffe. I felt as helpless as the dying giraffe."

- Nita Gilger, There can be Sadness in Holding On

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Does God Love Animals?

Dear Dr. Jay McDaniel,

Thank you for recommending that I learn about open and relational (process) theologies with their idea of a relational, loving God. I like much of what they say when it comes to human beings. But it's the other ninety-nine percent of life, including the animals, that makes me doubt the God even of open and relational theology.

As you know, I gave up on God many years ago because “he” seemed so callous when it comes to animals and their suffering.

I gave up on Christianity, too. Some of my Christian friends say that animals don't really matter to God, that they are "put here" just for us to enjoy. They seem not to care about animals at all, except maybe their pets. But even the more ecologically-minded among them talk more about "global warming" and "environmental destruction" than about individual animals. They are concerned with about the web of life but not nodes in the web, about endangered species but not vulnerable animals.

Here I'm not talking about vulnerable animals under human subjugation: the animals we eat for food, or use in scientific experiments, or ride in rodeos, or abandon on the streets. They matter to me a lot, but they're not the ones I'm concerned with here. Take a look at the photo above of the giraffe being eaten by crocodiles and read the account. Let the giraffe be the "vulnerable animal."

You explained that, for some open and relational (process) theologians, animals do matter. For them, you said, God shares in the suffering of individual animals and seeks their well-being, even as God also seeks the well-being of human beings and the planet as a whole. I asked what I might read and you mentioned your own book of many years ago: Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life. You also pointed me to a more recent book by Bethany Sollereder called God, Evolution and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall and one by Thomas Oord called Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being.

You recommended Dr. Oord's book as the one I read first, because it introduces open and relational theology in a general way. I just finished the book and am left with five questions. All are subsets of a single question: Where is God for the Dying Giraffe? I hope you might share the five questions with him or with other open and relational thinkers. Here they are:

• How does the giraffe feel God's presence, even if in an unconscious way? Is God's presence what process theologians call an initial aim: that is, a lure to live with satisfaction relative to the situation at hand?

• Do crocodiles also feel God's luring presence? Do they, too, feel God's immanence as a lure to live with satisfaction? Is their hunger a response to God's lure?

• If God lures the giraffe and the crocodiles toward these competing aims, is God conflicted? Or does God take sides?

• Nita Gilger writes:

"The giraffe was so very vulnerable. It was not a fair fight or in any way merciful. It almost seemed like the crocodiles were taking delight in the suffering of their prey as it struggled to free itself from their grasp. Instead of just chomping the juggler, the crocs took turns maiming and drowning the giraffe as it cried out."

Would the giraffe's suffering be an example of what you call genuine evil? I'm not blaming the crocodiles here. But I am talking about the giraffe's pain.

• Why, from an open and relational perspective, are there predator-prey relations in the first place? I know that, according to Thomas Oord, God did not set up the initial conditions of life on earth single-handedly. But did God play a role in bringing about predator-prey? If so, is God still loving and empathetic? Would it not be more plausible to say that God doesn't really care about individuals? And if that's the case, would God really be all-loving?

I hope you'll share these questions with Thomas Oord or some other open and relational thinkers? For my part, I'm still doubtful of God. It seems to me that, if there is a God, "he" doesn't really care about individual animal lives, and that we who do care are, in our way, more loving than God. I hate to say this, but I can't think of a way out.

Need help,

​

​Delores

Pluriform Love: An Open and

Relational Theology of Well-Being

Excerpts from Thomas Oord:​

"The God of uncontrolling love acts moment by moment and exerts causal influence upon all. God acts first as a cause in every moment of every creature’s life. Creatures feel this influence, even when they are not conscious of it. There is no time when, and no location where, God is not present and influencing."

"God does not create evil, and God did not singlehandedly determine the conditions for it to occur."

"We can solve the primary dimensions of the problem of evil by saying God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly, empathizes with the hurting, works to heal, endeavors to bring good from bad, calls creatures to join in overcoming evil, and does not create evil."

Why Isn't Divine Love Enough?

by R.E. Slater

As you can see here in these postings there is the introduction of the problem of sin and evil without any conclusion and has been left for the reader to try to answer.

Let's first assume the general teachings of the church that creation is good, and holy, and loving. This is how it was originally created as shared in the Genesis story about the Garden of Evil. Typically, the church then goes on to assert that at the Fall of Adam and Eve all of creation then fell with them.

And here lies the paradox. How could a "perfect" creation fall? Was it ultimately a failure of God's? Was God not wise enough, far looking enough, not persuasive enough in His work of creating creation?

Or perhaps God was not strong enough, too weak, too relenting, to permissive with creation?

Just what was creation's raison d'etre if it were not to become the very thing God wanted it to be? How could a good, loving God create such a paradox? Especially one that looks like a disaster on every level?

• A creation which is physically conflicted - human disabilities for instance or those "tweener" stages of evolutionary development responding too slowly or too quickly to the conditions around it?

• Or a creation which is psychologically conflicted - something along the lines of the Apostle Paul who said, "We/It wishes to do good but cannot do good."

Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? (Romans 7.13)

• Or a creation which is spiritually conflicted? 

"...but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves." (John 5.42)

In everyway which we might describe creation we find its fallenness, not its holiness, goodness, or love. And yet, creation's very definition is not by its lack, but by its very character as birthed of God IN God's very image (Imago Dei).

Creation may be described as sinful or fallen but its truer character or nature is that it IS of God, is SUSTAINED by God, and will be COMPLETED by God. During all these phases from birth to life to death God is the One who defines us - as well as our fallenness from God's divine love.

Whatever else you know of church teachings remember WE are OF God birthed to LOVE, to BE, and to BECOME. Death is the completion of this cycle. It is the next step towards God's intended BECOMING. Death is not the end, except as the end of pain, suffering, tragedy, sin and evil. Death is the next step towards discovering LIFE in its intentional design when first presented to a freewill creation.

Moreover, God did not "rule" creational freewill... freewill came from God's Person in the form of love... NOT by divine fiat as the church so blithely proclaims so wrongly. God births God's Self.

When we give birth to children we do not RULE how they shall become. NO. Children our birthed out of the essence of their parents with capacities both wonderful or horrifying. As parents we give children love, loving direction, loving care, and loving openness that they may become a loving version of their Father God Creator... along with our talents and abilities.

None of these character qualities can be RULED into becoming. We take what's there in the modeling clay and to the best of our abilities mold children into images which may give life, freedom, beauty, and kindness into this world.

So has God. Not by fiat but by love.

Small Ukrainian Child

Creation is fallen. We are fallen. No amount of (i) human ability (sic, Mother Teresa), or (ii) religious activity (sic, the Pharisees of Jesus' day such as the Apostle Paul once named Rabbi Saul for his energetic zest of Judaism), or (iii) physical denial (sic, Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox slavish, monkish rituals of chastity, abstinence, or chastisement of any kind) may produce atoning redemption.

No, Jesus alone is the One through whom atoning redemption comes. Jesus, as God in the flesh incarnated, who sacrificed Himself physically, psychologically, and spiritually, that in all areas of human living - or creational becoming - we might be freed from sin and enabled by God's Spirit to lean into - if not wholly lean into - lives of love and loving embrace.

God's Spirit, just like God's Self, does not come by divine rule, dominion, or power. But by loving embrace, entrance, wellbeing, care, kindness, and wholeness, as only God can give any part of creation.

Creation was formed for goodness and wellbeing. Happily death is part of creation that it may one day cease from its groanings and sufferings to come to know a fullness of life not grasped in this life of the in-between.

For between divine birth and a life's end indeterminancy rules. Our passions and evolved abilities drive us towards individual fulfillment, whether man or beast. A crocodile is not a giraffe. A giraffe is not a crocodile. We are not the wind. Nor is the flood like ourselves.

The gift of life isn't a guarantee of avoiding sin and evil. It but begins a life towards fulfillment as well as disappointment, dismay, even ruin. Through it all God's presence is there, living within these creational spaces, living with His creation in the good times and the bad.

We pray for peace for all living things. We pray for peace in this world and ones to come at the hands of our progeny. We pray that societies learn to live with one another in goodness and peace. And we pray we, as human civilizations, learn to live with creation in proper ecological balance and wellbeing.

The cycles of life and death, not unlike the cycles of spiritual life and death, are the only constants in an evolving creation. We do not know its outcome but we do know its Creator. And as Creator, God in His love and wisdom and filling presence goes before us, around us, within us, filling us with His love, and purpose, and desires.

Amen and Amen,

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2022

* * * * * * *

A Covid19 molecule

An Unsolvable Paradox

Should this help...

This is what I was going to write...

As a process thinker I have come to think about sin and suffering as a result of the divine freedom and love we, as any part of creation has, received. The conflicting result is a supreme paradox to the avowed divine creation of a loving God.

How could such harm and suffering come from such an innocent act as the birthing of the divine IMAGO centered in love and beauty? The purity and self-giving efficaciousness of the act of God stuns me into silence. Surely sin and evil cannot be such a byproduct of so grand a gift??

And yet, the very cycles of life contains within them cycles of pain and death. If I were an Eastern wiseman or wisewoman I would perhaps have a comment as to the necessity for such a Ying-Yang cycle. But I am not. I am Western and Christian in orientation and am not very well acquainted with the religious and moral wisdoms of the East, though I am thoroughly acquainted with the cynicisms of the West.

When I look at the Genesis account of creation I see behind it the struggle of the Hebrew ascetics struggling to answer this same age-old question against their own backgrounds of religious ethics and human morals.

Process theology comes the closest to restoring to me the sense of the love of God in all divine acts of divinity and creation. Of the uncontrolling and necessary gift of divine love inlaid upon the very heart of nature, mankind, and cosmos tells me of the consequential results of indeterminant freewill used to either love or not love.

But there is also the question of death, of pain, of sin and evil. How could a God of life even begin to accede to the realities of love's "other side" of darkness? Where "creational freewill + freewill act" may not be equal to the life and beauty and grand sunsets but more meanly described in harming family dysfunctionalism, personal or societal cruelties, or institutionalized desensitization to the suffering of others?

No, the divine act of love is a mystery. Nor can it be all on creation to act forthrightly when even the act of love is supremely hard to accomplish. And in the divine act of atonement through God's Self as witnessed in God's Incarnational Birth in Jesus, we still see the act of love confounded in a thousand different ways.

Unfortunately sin and death and suffering and injustice seemed the inconsequential acts of not only love gone wrong, but it's opposite ying-yang struggle for personal survival in the face of need using our/creation's baser instincts which overwhelm us in our sense of self to whatever this thing we call life really is.

These are age-old questions which have no simple answers. Not religiously,  Christianly, or morally, though many have attempted it many times. The mystery of creational theodicy (e.g., the problem of sin and evil) is a question not only left to theologians to answer but to the despairing mom or dad whose children are at risk of malnutrition, societal harm, continuing health complications, lack of proper clothing, who ask these same questions every moment of their lives.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2022

 

God Is Love

7 Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God was revealed [a]in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the [b]propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has [c]for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear [d]involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.