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

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Index - Evolution of Worship & Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Index - Evolution of Worship & Religion. Show all posts

Thursday, January 8, 2026

Index - The Evolution of Worship & Religion


The Evolution of Worship & Religion traces humanity's long search for meaning, transcendence, identity, community, and the sacred.

Beginning in the early prehistories of mankind and moving through the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, India, Greece, Christianity, modernity, and beyond, this series explores how religious ideas emerged, evolved, flourished, fragmented, and continue to transform.

The essays which follow are accompanied by supplementary studies, historical investigations, theological reflections, and processual reconstructions designed to help readers navigate the complex history of faith, culture, scripture, philosophy, and society.

The Evolution of Worship &  Religion
The Historical Journey of Religion from Prehistory to the Contemporary World
The Evolution of Worship & Religion traces humanity's long search for meaning, transcendence, identity, community, and the sacred. Beginning in prehistory and moving through the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, India, Greece, Christianity, modernity, and beyond, the series explores how religious ideas emerged, evolved, flourished, fragmented, and continue to transform.

Part historical survey, part cultural history, and part philosophical reflection, these essays examine the development of worship, mythology, scripture, theology, and religious institutions across more than ten thousand years of human experience. Throughout, the series seeks to understand religion not as a static phenomenon, but as a dynamic and evolving response to humanity's encounter with reality, meaning, and the mystery of existence.

INTRODUCTION
PART I - FOUNDATIONS: THE BIRTH OF THE SACRED

The earliest religious impulses emerged long before written history. This section explores humanity's first experiences of ritual, symbolism, kinship, animism, and sacred presence, tracing the foundations from which later religious traditions would arise.
PART II - THE AGE OF GODS

As civilizations grew, so too did their pantheons. The sacred became increasingly organized through temples, priesthoods, myths, kingship, and divine hierarchies. These essays examine the great religious cultures of the ancient world and the emergence of the gods who shaped human imagination for millennia.
PART III - AXIAL AWAKENINGS

Between roughly 800 and 200 BCE, many civilizations experienced profound intellectual, philosophical, and religious transformations. Ancient assumptions were challenged as new visions of morality, transcendence, reason, and human purpose emerged.
PART IV - THE SACRED MADE UNIVERSAL

The local gods of tribes and nations gradually gave way to religious traditions claiming universal significance. This section explores the emergence of world religions, the challenges of modernity, and the continuing transformation of faith in an increasingly interconnected world.
PART V - A PROCESSUAL SUMMATION

The final essays draw together the themes developed throughout the series and explore their implications for contemporary faith, theology, ethics, and spiritual formation.
PART VI - SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES

The following companion studies expand upon key historical, linguistic, textual, theological, and comparative themes introduced throughout the series.

Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Israel and the Ancient Near East

SM 4 - How the Ancient Near East Gave Shape to Israel's God:
Bible Versions, Variants, and Their Histories

Theological and Comparative Studies: 
From Ancient Plurality to Modern Certainty:
The journey continues in the Companion Essays to The Evolution of Worship & Religion, where themes of myth, philosophy, scripture, theology, cosmology, and ethics are explored in greater depth through a process-relational lens.



Companion Essays to
"The Evolution of Worship & Religion"


These companion studies extend the themes explored in The Evolution of Worship & Religion. Together they trace a broad intellectual journey from the mythological worlds of antiquity to contemporary questions of faith, scripture, theology, cosmology, ethics, and human flourishing.

The movement follows a historical and philosophical progression:

Outline
Myth → Philosophy → Faith → Scripture → Church → Cosmos → Theology → Ethics

Ancient religion → Greek critique → Christian reconstruction → Biblical history → 
Ecclesial critique → Process metaphysics → Process theology → Process ethics

FROM MYTH TO PHILOSOPHY

Beginning in the Late Bronze Age world of Mycenaean civilization (c. 1600–1200 BCE), this study traces the evolution of Greek religious imagination from the heroic myths and divine pantheons preserved in Homeric tradition, through their composition and collection during the Greek Archaic Age (c. 750–500 BCE), and ultimately to the rise of Greek philosophy in the works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (c. 470–322 BCE).

Together, these essays explore one of history's great intellectual transformations: the movement from mythic explanations of reality toward philosophical inquiry, skepticism, and reasoned reflection on the nature of gods, humanity, and the cosmos.

Here, we trace the long journey from the sacred myths of gods and heroes to the emergence of philosophy, skepticism, and reasoned inquiry, as Greek thinkers increasingly questioned the divine stories that had once explained the world.

If ancient philosophy challenged inherited mythologies, modernity and postmodernity challenged inherited certainties. Yet the collapse of certainty need not result in the collapse of faith.

These essays explore how religious belief might be reconstructed after modern skepticism, scientific naturalism, postmodern deconstruction, and contemporary doubt. Rather than returning to older forms of certainty, they seek new possibilities for faith within an open, relational, and evolving world.

Religious traditions are sustained not only through belief, but through memory, narrative, scripture, and interpretation. These studies examine the development of biblical traditions, messianic expectations, and early Christian understandings of Jesus using Isaiah 53.
The Bible did not emerge fully formed. Rather, it developed through centuries of oral tradition, scribal activity, textual transmission, translation, interpretation, and theological reflection.

These essays explore the historical formation of scripture and the diverse communities that shaped its preservation and meaning.
THE CHURCH, POWER, AND PUBLIC WITNESS

Religious institutions often struggle between faithfulness and power, conviction and coercion, witness and ideology.

These essays critically examine biblical authority, ecclesial identity, nationalism, war, and the challenges facing Christianity in the modern world.
COSMOS, REALITY, AND DIVINE BECOMING

The story of religion eventually encounters larger questions concerning reality itself. What kind of universe do we inhabit? Is consciousness fundamental or emergent? Does reality possess value, direction, or meaning?

These essays explore cosmology, metaphysics, consciousness, and the nature of becoming within a process-relational universe.
THE SACRED COSMOS

If reality is fundamentally relational, creative, and participatory, then theology must be reconsidered in light of that vision.

These studies explore a processual understanding of divinity emerging from the world itself rather than descending from beyond it.
SACRED ETHICS AND CULTURE

Ideas ultimately return to practice. How shall we live within an open, relational, evolving universe?

These essays explore ethics, culture, cooperation, sustainability, and human flourishing within a processual vision of reality.

The journey continues...



Re-illustrated Chronologically by ChatGPT


Posted by at 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)