R.E. Slater Shorts - Let's Talk About Process Theology v Universalism

I guess I am doing a little advertising for Pete Enns, but I like the guy and think he and his organization can be helpful to Christians looking to grow beyond their faith borders held in check by traditional church dogmas.

I also think Pete is personally exploring process theology while continuing to lean into progressive evangelical theology. I get the latter as it would be the direction I would choose if I hadn't discovered John Cobb et al's process theology built upon Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy many years earlier when building out this blog/website.

My journey began when concluding my lay ministeries and joining a new fellowship known as Mars Hill led by Rob Bell. Here was spoken a progressive (emergent, or emerging) evangelical gospel as a positive outbreak from the more staid forms of Christian traditionalism I had grown up with. Years later, after Rob had left for California, I realized I needed a new philosophic-theology beyond the one I had inherited from my Baptist roots.

So when deciding to write about my faith journey as I left my classical roots to explore a more progressive (westernized) theology I early on stumbled across (i.e., was providentially led by the Holy Spirit) into what has now become for me the more superior form of theology based upon Whitehead's process philosophy of organism. It became the philosophic-theological base I was seeking and naturally held at it's core God's love, equality of justice, personal liberty within a encorporated democracy, and charitable relations to all.

Before my discovery I was comparatively researching the analytical (~ formula-based) traditions of Christian systematics to the narratival approaches of continental thought. In so doing I realized I could take the art of story telling towards a more thematic approach of the bible which I could then layer on my inductive bible training. And as I did I eventually discovered process philosophy and theology which, like Bartian theology, seems more of a bridge between American and European thinking, or a mediating third way, if you well.

Here were some of my observations back then:

Firstly, process theology naturally comports with the quantum evolutionary sciences which is beginning to abandon its mechanical world of parts-and-pieces for an ever evolving, processual creation when realizing the universe's highly connective and relational cosmology acting more like a "living" organism than as an interconnected system of scientific laws and working parts.

Secondly, process thought helps me extend Jesus as Atoning Savior/God to non-westernized regions of the world, such as the Middle-Eastern and Eastern religions of Asia which look at the world we live in processually. Thus, Whitehead's western-based process philosophy is highly connective to the Muslim and Hindu faiths thus providing an extended metaphysical framework of "common ground" wherein I might describe God and salvation in processual terms rather than in stiff formulaic and non-relational systematic terms.

And thirdly, I find process theology simply works better with my earlier Reformed theology (as I suspect it will with all other forms of Christianity). That is, the Hellenised theology of the New Testament is steeped in Greek Platonic thought forms which give to us a clock-like, mechanical universe reduced to its parts (sic, Newton, Kant, Descartes, etc). Whereas Whitehead picked up Hegel's earlier cosmological insights to re-establish a far more ancient cosmology before the Greeks. One which is far more ancient describing creation as a living complex of organic panrelational, panexperiential, and panpsychic ontological primary elements which are irreducibly One. Thid is retold )or, narrated) again and again over the eons by the ancients in their paleo-stories of God, creation, redemption, provision, and beauty. In essence, creation is irreducibly and complexly One which may further be described as a living, evolving, processual organism.

Lastly, for those more interested in process theology (which is, in its heart, or core structures, naturally "progressive") than in progressive versions of westernized evangelical theology, I would suggest Tripp Fuller's Homebrewed websites as the primary place to go to re-form one's progressive thoughts besides readings in Cobb and Whitehead. Moreover, both he and Pete Enns are loosely working together from their differing approaches to the Christian faith. Tripp from his own Baptist roots and Pete from his evangelical inheritance.

I think this newly forming fellowship between the two can be greatly helpful to progressive Christians looking for a more organic theology than the present westernized Platonic theology which evangelicalism is solidly martied to. Further, Tripp is highly connected to the Whiteheadian/Cobb community of process philosophers and theologians. To help, I've provided their respective websites below.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater

September 12, 2023

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Divine Self Investment

by Tripp Fuller

https://trippfuller.com/

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Homebrewed Christianity

by Tripp Fuller

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSEzrfWmwQaLdnA5XarVomg

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UNIVERSAL SALVATION IS NOT MODERN

Universal Salvation in Historical and Systematic Perspective.

by Pete Enns

Fall Classroom, 2023

https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/summerschool/#universalsalvation

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The "S" Word

What Sin Is & How It Has Infiltrated Our Systems

by Pete Enns

Fall Classroom, 2023

https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/classes/the-s-word/?mc_cid=5ea3228a02&mc_eid=6bdc0b206b

R.E. Slater Shorts

Let's Talk About

Process Theology v Universalism

My "Shorts" are given as one-offs which I'm thinking about on any given topic of the day which I may have come across in my daily readings. Hopefully they spark another way of thinking  about a subject whether light-hearted or heavy. - re slater

My view on universalism is quite a bit different though it probably gets me to the same conclusion as universalism. But I'd rather approach the story of God's love from a processual gospel standpoint than from a westernized version of systematic theology. In the process approach God is love and will lovingly interact with all of creation in every way possible without circumventing creational agency or freewill. As creation bears the "Imago Dei" of God it thus bears all the ability to bless; to recreate thriving communities; and to enrich generative acts of love across everything around itself. But when not enacting our very creational NATURE (which is not sin but LOVE) than it's consequential actions will not bless, nor create generative thriving, nor enrich. In Whiteheadian-based process theology, a loving God's embeddedness of God's divine Being into creation allows for pancessual evolutionary growth of love against the self - or self will - which inhabits nature's soul and is BASED on LOVE not sin (re: processual pan-en-theism NOT Eastern pantheism). Quite obviously, this approach has removed the classic approach of traditional theism which leans into God's transcendence much harder than it does God's immanence to God's creation. Without denying God's "Otherness" process theology speaks to God's incessant, necessary immanence across all westernized doctrines of abondoness, juegment, separation, and errant beliefs of Divine Holiness. Love than is the coin with two halves... It is why we all have agency and also the reason we yearn to enact beauty... but it is also the curse which pains our souls when we can not, or do not, and which enflames the sin and evil WE do (not God) from the broken mirror of Love's passionate side.

Dante's Divine Comedy in B&W Woodcuts

In contrast, the western doctrine of universalism describes hell as a present condition and not a present expectation of the Christian gospel. It is often depicted in the Dantian description of purgatory in his book, the "Divine Comedy," which shows to readers the horrors their souls would go through if they did not obey God's laws nor live righteously (thus promoting Christian legalism and prideful holiness). And because of Calvinism, though other non-Reformed approaches are likewise as guilty (Wesleyanism, Lutheran, Methodism, Catholicism, Eastern and Russian Orthodoxy), we blame the world condition upon a controlling God determined to enact His will upon all the earth. Consequently, we get divine imprecations throughout the biblical narrative of living up to our contractual obligations under God's covenants or else suffer the consequences of our unfaithful sin and evil. Of course, this would be a gross misreading of the covenants as the Abrahamic beautiful shows salvation as unconditionally laid upon us upon the surety of God's Self who walks through the sacrificial halves; or the Davidic assuring of blessed reign and peace when the godly lead their flocks towards truth and beauty; or the promise of landed communities inhabiting enculturated regions on the earth which may enact the love of God in their own way; or even dramatically in the Cross covenant of "sacrificial selfless service" to others underlaid by Jesus' atoning resurrection and dramatic revelation of God's everlasting love.

Article link - I've followed Ben Corey over the years and like his thinking. His brief article may be helpful in thinking through the more typical approach to Universalism.

Lastly, Westernised "universalism" seeks to delimit and rebound (e.g., as in re-circumscribe theological borders) the prognosticated afterlife of hell (and purgatory for some faiths) by arguing that the Love of God Wins. Or that Jesus Wins. Which is all true in process theology. But unlike process theology, progressive Christian theolgy is trying to heal its systematic doctrines upon Platonic philosophies which are neither processual, pancessual, or center in theologies of love. Remaking a pig by putting lipstick on it won't be enough. The entire affair of Western dogma has to be uprooted and replaced upon Whitehead's process philosophy of organism in order to be able to live up to the God of Love whom we are worshipping on creaky traditional church platforms weeping with theological holes throughout its substructures.

R.E. Slater

September 12, 2023

PS - I forgot to mention that process-based panentheism is inherently combinatory , or re-connective as a processual teleology embedded in God's love. Hence, process theology really doesn't have an eschatology but a teleology which assumes that Jesus in the processual reconnector to a "broken" creation burdened with an agency inclined towards blessing but plagued with unloving responses against it's very ontological structure. You may read more on my website.

PSS - For the process few out there I would welcome further written observation beyond my mere attempts to describe the why's and wherefore's of a westernized religious system that is flawed and unable to work in a postmodern, post-Christian cultural context. Moreover, I find process theology to be able to morph with the times ahead much as the church has used Hellenised/Platonic thought to do the same over the past 2000 years. Thx.

PSSS - My typical (Calvinistic) Reformed soteriological chart in my non-process days focused on the Work & Sufficiency of Christ. Below may be more of a Wesleyan approach emphasizing the importance of a faith verified by it's works lest it simply exists as a useless, or meaningless, faith that "indwells" with "expelling" God's love in action.

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THE MILESES

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

WORKS-UNIVERSALISM:

CONTRADICTION OR MIDDLE GROUND?

article link

April 28, 2022

We have developed a quadrant model for describing soteriological compromises. The biblical message of salvation is summarized as Faith Alone in Christ Alone (FACA). Two ways to reject this are by rejecting the sufficiency of FACA or the necessity of FACA. Each of these two sides has differing extremes: On the side that rejects sufficiency, a near alternative is Works-Assisted Condition while a distant alternative is Works-Assisted Merit; on the side that rejects necessity, a near alternative is Christian Pluralism while a distant alternative is Christian Universalism.

Not every soteriological view fits squarely in one of these quadrants. Sometimes, there are middle ground views. For example, a Christian Pluralist could say that works are a condition for salvation, such that all “good” Catholics and all “good” Protestants are saved. This view is extremely popular among Evangelicals. It gives a nod to some necessity of belief about Jesus, but in the end, it shifts the object of faith from Christ to self.

Another middle ground that believers need to know about is between Works-Assisted Merit and Christian Universalism. These two extremes at first seem to be contradictory. How can someone believe that everyone is saved while still saying he needs to earn his salvation? Since Universalism is so anti-biblical, it does not have a coherent hermeneutic and therefore comes in many forms. Some forms of Universalism redefine hell in a way that puts them in a Works-Universalism middle-ground.

Hell is a real place. The Bible speaks about hell in the plainest terms. Jesus talked about the rich man going to the torments of hell (Luke 16:19–31). John’s Revelation tells us that the day will come when hell will be emptied and its occupants will be judged and transferred to the Lake of Fire for eternity (Rev. 20:11–15). Universalists abandon grammatical-historical hermeneutics when reading about hell. One move that is becoming popular is to spiritualize hell into a current experience. Instead of hell being a real place that the unregenerate will go to after they die, it is a spiritual kingdom here and now. Since hell is already, then it will not be future and everyone will be with Jesus in the end… or at least this is what some Universalists are saying.

Suppose we have a drug addict living miserably on the street. The Biblicist realizes that this man’s greatest need is to believe in Christ for eternal life (if he hasn’t already). This addict was born spiritually dead and on a path to hell. He will eventually spend eternity separate from God if he does not get saved. This is everyone’s greatest need. The Biblicist would love for him to abandon his lifestyle and become a productive member of a local church—but this is a matter of discipleship, not salvation. The addict can turn his life around and live happily without Christ, but even then, he would still lack his greatest need: eternal life. To the Universalist, there is no final separation from God, so “hell” is the lifestyle that the addict is living now. He does not need to believe in Jesus; he just needs to change his lifestyle. He needs to stop doing drugs and start doing what makes him happy. It is all about works here and now.

In that way of thinking, if someone is miserable now then he is in hell now. In the drug addiction example, for someone to get out of “hell,” he needs to clean up his life. See how salvation from hell suddenly becomes a works-merit system? The Universalist of this stripe teaches that everyone will be with God eventually, but they still teach a works-merit salvation from hell because they have redefined hell in a way that fits with self-righteousness.

There are several trends in evangelicalism today that are making people susceptible to these theological moves, so the modern believer needs to be aware of these maneuvers so he can protect himself and others from these dangerous doctrines. Long story short, if someone starts to spiritualize hell, then beware of hidden self-righteousness.

Process Futures Grant Hope as well as Being

Process Futures Grant Hope as well as Being

R.E. Slater

Introduction

After 8 years of working from the bottom up through the Scriptures using a variety of evangelical tools, methodologies, and structures, I have concluded as of early last Fall of 2020 to purposely move more fully into process philosophy and theology and will now intentionally restructure this next phase of biblical exploration at Relevancy22 using process thought as the primary modus operandi (sic, a method or procedure) as fully as I can throughout biblical and systematic thinking.

Let me cite several reasons:

(i) Because I am convinced that biblical process thinking is an enhancement to all previous discussions, systems, and doctrines of God over the centuries, it is felt that it should be explored more fully.

(ii) That it leans into the doubt, uncertainties and questions today's contemporary religious, quasi-religious, and secular societies are facing.

(iii) And that it comports very well between the Christian faith and today's postmodern/metamodern sciences. In fact, extremely will.

All of which is to say that process thought seems very promising - especially as it can bridge the church and science gap so very well and does include all religions around the globe into its observations both richly and expansively.

As an example, as Christians learn to read the bible by a specific method, based upon a particular system, or a multiple set of doctrinal systems, those methodologies would influence how a reader might perceive the teachings of Scriptures thereby reinforcing those learned systems onto one's existential faith. If I had learned to read the bible through the quizzical, wonderous mindset of Dr. Suess, the children's book author, I would naturally read "Suessian Structure" throughout the bible. I wouldn't question my reading of the bible because I wouldn't have questioned the methodology by which I had learned to read the bible in my earlier contexts of faith formation.

Similarly, I wish to now learn to read the bible from a process theological perspective. A system which is more fully expansive of the Christian faith and more fully centered in the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. It would be more fully introspective and self-critical of its postulations, more open to doubt and uncertainty, and more willing to explore other avenues of thought without limiting conjecture or discussion (if properly done).

And if process thought is as much a part of our limited view of reality as it seems to show, then I would expect to find process theology throughout the pages of the bible as I read it. Why? Because the kind of perceived human experience I am having in today's present society should show up in the more ancient narratives of human experience. Woe, travesty, travail, hardship, disbelief, wonderment, beauty, and so on. To which I think we can all agree is as relevant today as it was in earlier individual experiences and societies.

But not only should I read of process reality in the bible but also find it embedded throughout past civilizations struggling with similar religious ideas, corruption of power, disinterest in altruism, or reflectivity to the harm mankind seems to always carry with it. Process reality should be found everywhere, in every era, and every human space of activity.

The bible recast in the form as Process Christianity should then lend even more insights to the extuant church doctrines of our day, the theodicy questions we have of God, and of our own experience, and what we might expect the future to hold. Process Thought might therefore be our best help and guide through doctrinal dead ends and Christian teachings straying away from God's love to poorly enacted instances of unloving human justice, justifying the ends by the means, if you will.

I was reminded of this the other day by an older, ex-minister of the CRC church, a Calvinist friend and trained graduate student from Calvin Seminary. He had asked me to share with him what process theology is and how it might be applicable to the Christian faith. Like the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill, I spent 90 minutes in personal tutorial and discussion until he felt sufficiently informed. At once, being enlightened, the old minister began quoting Scripture after Scripture to me, using process thinking. He was learning to see process theology everywhere he turned upon its pages. Now this didn't change his mind... which for me is ok. That's the Lord's job. But needless to say, we understood each other very well in the Spirit and the Fellowship of the Lord, which perhaps may have been the better result.

Process Theology is the New Big Boy on the Block

Let us begin. First, chose any "biblical" system you want - whether Catholic, Protestant, East Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever. Any-and-all theological or religious systems will be found to be subtended over and smoothed out in Process Theology when given a chance.

How do I know? In the Christian tradition when one spends time reading and parsing the bible we hope to pull from the lived realities we know into the texts we are studying. And when doing so, compare our bible studies to reality itself so that our faith is applicable to life's contexts. If our faith didn't measure up, then such a faith belief would be unhelpful and unnecessary.

Let me suggest then that in the face of Whiteheadian Process Philosophy and Theology this reality which is everywhere about us is a process relational reality found in all events, at all times, everywhere.

Pick the psychology, sociology, economic, politick, governance, science, or theology, and all human endeavors and disciplines will comply to the process paradigm of being and event. Of becoming and outcome.

Consequently, all past and future rubrics mankind has attempted to utilize to explain life may either help to further explain life or fail to capture life's sublimity. Process thought is a way of perceiving the world which will encompass some systems or reject others. Hence, Jungian Type-and-Archetype can be easily included. But the philosophical worlds of Platonism and Neo-Platonism will come crashing down against the newer eras of quantum possibilities.

Platonism Has Died

The Westernization of Plato has ended. After 2500 years we may be free of its grasp. The new philosophical theorem it must now interact with is process philosophy for the moment. Just as Newtonian physics gave way to Quantum physics so too must older constructs of the world give way to newer constructs of the world until such a time as they must be given up or restructured in some other way.

Even now, process philosophy is on the rise in the West, across the East, Indo-Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Middle-East, Africa, and the Americanas. All future beliefs, conjectures, and sciences will now have to deal with process thought even as they are currently working through what quantum events might mean across all areas of research, study, and application.

In process relational terms, quantum events may be recast as "timeful processes of temporary moments" which come as quickly as they pass. This is the new reality. A quantum reality circumscribed by process event.

Moreover, there are no eternal objects as Platonism had decreed and has flooded into our Westernized thinking over the centuries as we think about the world, God, and life in general. Instead, we now must restructure our thinking to include momentary experiences hinting at future process outcomes. Outcomes that give rise to actualities which give rise to further occasions of becoming. But nowhere in this process can there be eternal objects of the kind and type we were raised to comprehend. More on this in a moment....

Hence, Whiteheadian Process Thought may be understood in this greater philosophical context as an Integral Theory of all things. Thinking in mathematical terms of set theory, such designated theories are the greatest set of all subtending subsets proceeding from them, or contained within them. Process Thought is the greatest Set of all other sets that includes everything including itself. This then is how we might describe a philosophical Theory or Everything, or Integral Theory.

Process Theology Is Found In All Previous Systems

Biblical Theological Systems attempt to act as all-inclusive theories. Attempting to describing God as fully as they can from the narratives of the bible, found in history, in the sciences, and in our everyday experiences. Some theologians like to call these testimonies as the four witnesses: (i) the bible, (ii) church history and tradition, (iii) natural  theology of nature including anthropological studies of man and human societies, and, (iv) our life experiences.

Classic Calvinism (as found in the Reformed Churches) has come-and-gone, morphing nowadays into  the more restrictive evangelical conservative churches across America in newer forms of neo-Calvinism with its Trumpian emphasis on personal liberties over that of other people's liberties. Not caretake or concern for others as could be displayed in the simple act of mask wearing during these times of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. But care and concern for themselves, their beliefs, their religious laws, and condemnations.

In comparison, Classic Arminianism (Wesleyans, Methodists, Baptists) has transitioned towards an expanded form of itself as Open and Relational Theology which is composed of equal parts open theism (the future is open, not closed, predestined or foreordained) and relational theism (all in God and in the world are relational and relatable).

Need another example? Salvation theories revolving around Christ continue to reposition themselves through our human experience of hope, despair, abandonment, imprisonment, betrayal, lostness, and so forth. Early Church Hellenism, Catholic Church Scholasticism, Sectarian, if not Cultic forms of Gnosticism, and even Jewish Rabbinic readings of the OT Law into today's contemporary societies are all forms of biblical theological systems attempting to make sense of one's faith and the world.

Looked at another way, there have been (and still is) many proposed historical schematics described in terms of (i) occupation periods of imperial empires, or (ii) by world crisis events (disease, pandemics, weather), or (iii) the failure or success of human governance, comportment, or congeniality. We've moved from the Dark Ages, to the Renaissance Era, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Modernism, Postmodernism, even Metamodernism, and whatever else will be forthcoming.

In all these descriptions - whether by religious doctrine or by historical period - one could further describe each one in terms of process relational events irrespective of their qualities or characteristics. They have come-and-gone exactly as we have lived them out. A different choice here, a different act there, by an individual or a group, and the outcomes would either differ by degree or altogether by the event itself.

Reality is a Process Reality

Life, whether in the bible, or in the world, is an event process. What we read of in ancient literature tells us this is so. As a Christian, I should like to take this newest Integral Theory of Process Events and further describe it in theological terms using metaphysics, ontology, and cosmos-centric experiences.

As it has been state that all reality can now be understood in terms of Whiteheadian process theory as an overall integral theory of all previous systems theories both secular or biblical. And that whether we read the narratives of the bible or the comparative literatures of the world, all observe a form of process event as part of creation's relational realtiy.

More so, every philosophy, every theology, every cultural anthropology, every scientific observation will observe process, process, process.

Westernized Platonism use to described the world we live in by eternal objects. No longer. Those objects are secondary objects to the human experience itself. In effect, they are unreal. Objects we give reality to by our inquiring thoughts and speculations. But ethereal objects serving at best as descriptors to the real events of process experience.

Eternal Objects Are No More

Essensentially, all eternal objects are derivative effects of event processes proceeding along temporal lines of spacetime acting upon each other while giving the phenomenological occurence of newer occasions and actualities we may surmise into meta-events but are consequential to our human experience.

Platonism believed eternal objects to be real. As separate and outside of timeful history. Process Thought says they are not but a consequence to the acts of process events. That there is nothing which is separate nor outside of timeful history as immaterial, unsubstantive ontological objects unless we posit God Himself. Which, in the Christian system, as in many other religions, we will and we do.

Otherwise, these descriptor objects simply inform us of our experience living within a process-based universe or momentary spacetime with its matter and forces and consequences.

As example, we think of the universe as eternal. It was until it wasn't any longer. From its Big Bang beginnings (as some conjecture), to perhaps its Big Crunch ending (as some conjecture); or whether it will be absorbed into another multiverse even as it was birthed by a previous multiverse (as some conjecture), the universe is not static but living and dying moment-by-moment. Its eternality lies in its endless streams of birth and death events.

So too may we describe our reality. A reality entirely dependent upon the antecedent past colliding with the ever forming present as it morphs and reshapes in response into future processes repeating themselves over and over, again and again.

What is Eternality?

Eternality is actually the repetition of the eternal moment. It is a time-and-event dependent process to give it shape and form found within its deep interactivity with its relational organism.

Process Theology takes these process events of life - regardless of their cosmological, metaphysical, or ontological antecedents and recasts them into the fabric of temporality of the human experience.

From the ancient days before homo sapien man was, to their primal cultures, then their ancient societies of which the bible and other ancient literature speak, our human experience is receiving, reshaping, and retelling its hopes and dreams of a future outcome. Outcomes generally seeking goodness and wellbeing in the midst of suffering and tragedy.

In postmodern - or metamodern - terms, Process Relational Theory is redescribing philosophy, theology, literature, science, and human ecological civilization. Process societies are remeasuring themselves in terms of relational goodness and wellbeing to the creative ecological order which they have pushed away and now are re-embracing in novel and formative restructuring of ecologically-driven postmodern societies.

And where is God in all this? God is right here with us and with creation.

God is a Process God of Novel Relationships

God, who has breathed upon the formless void of matter, has breathed His process-substance into its deeps. Disturbing its structures. Recasting its formless matter. Has given it His eternal Personage as the only real eternal object ever existing.

God has imbued Himself into the void's creational structures by His Image and by His Essence. God is the ontological difference that gave to formless matter its process event constitution. And thereby recast its constitution to house within its physical structures God's own metaphysical Being. The divine wind which carries the re-constitution of matter along into spacetime process relations is the same divine wind which is carried within these self-same structures.

When we think of creation we must think of the God who formed creation within the very processes of Himself. Both as an active exterior force as well as a divine presence within creation's very structures. 

Structures which bear God's Essence of relationality to all things. God's creativity. God's goodness. God's wellbeing. Each-and-all of these qualitative differences have been birthed from God's divine Self into the formless primordial oozes (or densely hot plasmic forces) of pre-creational mass.

And because God's Self is love so we may expect creational freewill agency to part of this divine love flowing through creation's veins. It beats within every part of its divinely energized creation. Not by divine fiat but by God's presence of Self within and without the creational process. Note too, that we speak not of pantheism but panentheism. As God is ontologically different from creation He is also intricately a part of creation's process relational events.

Process Theology and Theodicy

Similarly, when evil arises, it comes not from God who is good, but from creationally-imbued freewilled agency as an aftermath of God's Self imparted into creation. God is a freewilled Being. He is a relational Being. We therefore should expect, and do find, creation to have relational agency within and without itself as it moves through time and space. God's Image has been not only stamped or imprinted upon creation. It is it's lifeblood. It's energy force. What drives it and makes it go.

God is good. God can do no evil. Though death and destruction is a part of life it is not an evil unless it is formed as an evil by the freewill agency of creation itself. Creational processes are birthed and they die. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes explosively. This is its process. But where human sentience (and that of the sentience of the animal kingdom) come into play, the normal interplay of life and death may become something more ruinous, more evil. This is not of God. It is of a freewill agency stepping beyond God to be its own godlike force.

Is there a hell? Not by God who is good. Nor does God cast sinful mankind into hell. Whatever hells there may be God is in the life-giving, heavenly restructuring of harm into care and wellbeing where and when He can in an agency driven cosmos.

Evil is a part of the creational process. It is an agency-driven event impacting other relational events within a complex process structure of intra- and inter- process activity.

God Is the Future

One last...

The future is a concept, a process concept which arises from past processes forming current processes and thereby affecting "future" processes. These processes and their effects carry with them many possible futures but each future is contingent upon every other possible event process.

God should not be conceived as an eternal object controlling spacetime contingency  - though God does breathe into creation it's continuity. This contingency is given to creation as its own future to write by the kind of constitution it has been formed as previously explained.

What this means is that God does not control creation's destiny. He cannot. God has imbued creation with Himself. Creation is driven by God's Essence. His Being. Creation has been imbued with freewill agency. A relational agency affecting all of its organism, or parts.

But rather than saying God is controlling the future, or its destiny, we may quite freely state that God is  affecting creation's future destiny with goodness and wellbeing through imbued processes events urging to creation to come into fellowship with the Divine Essence it was birthed by and formed in.

Though these processes may or may not obey their nature of godliness, it will strive within itself to become what it is or further separate towards a less fulfilling image or identity. Christians speak to this event as either hearing and being drawn to the Spirit of God in spiritual penitence and transformation or fleeing from the Spirit of God call to them to repent and be saved.

In-and-through of the process events of life the Spirit of God strives against the agency of creation calling it from death back to life when moving towards process events which are less than fulfilling, less than good, less than what it was made to be.

Process Futures are Dynamic

We may also say that such futures will be good or bad dependent upon the processes we as mankind chose to initiate. Even so, we cannot know the future anymore than God can know the future. The future is unknowable (open theism based upon Process Theology).

The future holds many possible outcomes each affecting other possible occasions and actualities towards many other possible outcomes. We might call this the Physics of Possible-lism.

Yet the future is formative. It is not set. Not predetermined. Not known.

The future may lean Godward as much as it leans away from God. But God has given creation agency to it. An agency He cannot control because it bears His Image. His Essence. His Being of freewill.

Yet strangely - if not strangely hopeful - the very processes of creation bears God's Self, His Imprint, His Urging.

God is Imbued in all Process Futures 

The future does not need to be known nor determined as God's Self is the future in this process world of being and becoming.

Even as creation continues to expand or retract - or be absorbed by another creational process perhaps that of a multiverse - in all those futures to come God is there, with it, with us, ever and always.

God in this manner has no need to know or determine the future because the future is essentially formed in God through the very process God has birthed and birthed Himself into.

God has internalized His Self into the very fabric of the process relational event. Where it goes He goes. Where it ends up He ends up. The Future and God are one and the same. Even as God inhabits the past and the present God so then inhabits the future. Not by determination nor control but by His being which is ever becoming in the becoming events of relational process transactions.

"I AM Who I AM" says God. He is who He is coming to Be. What God was He will Be Something Else in the Future, regardless of where the Future goes. Why? Because is there with it, driving it, forming it back to Himself. God is the Future, as God was the Past and now our Present. God Is. And God Will Be and Become. Let us follow God's example. Let our beings become usurping all possible worlds and worldly outcomes urging each element towards love by the divinely driven redemptive processes of salvific reformation.

R.E. Slater

April 17, 2017

*My apologies as my metaphors have clashed with the theological presentation of panentheism. I have attempted to expand its structures without confusing the ontology of the Creator with His Creation. Like Jesus' parables let's go with what I've written and take away what may be helpful in healing ourselves and the worlds we interact with. I, myself, would like to see goodness define our worlds rather than sin. In this regard I've attempted to emphasize goodness over sin. Yes, there is sin. No, sin isn't what defines God's creation. Creation is imaged in God. So are we. We, like it, bear God's imprimatur through Christ. Peace and grace to you till the end of days. - res

Re-Reading Scripture Through Process Eyes

ADDENDUM

After writing this post yesterday I happened to listen to Tripp Fuller and Peter Rollins last night discuss nearly the same subject on-an-off during a podcast they made a couple days earlier which I had missed.  I met Peter once or twice through Rob Bell and Mars Hill Church when Pete occasionally spoke there and have followed him ever since. I especially enjoy his Jack Caputo-like approach to radical theology (the weakness of God, the death of God) and ability to update the philosopher Hegel from the Continental Philosophical tradition into Jack's (and Peter's) application of it into the atoning work and resurrection of Christ and what this means for the church today.

Anyway, about 30 minutes in Tripp and Pete tag into process theology and what this means about God and how we think about God (I believe it releases God from our confining religious holds upon Him granting God permission to be God's Self). Then later, about 25 minutes near the end of they're conversation, they mention it again.

Needless to say, those both in the process camp, and those outside of it, who are working with process metaphysics and Hegelian philosophy carried through in the tradition of Continentalism are feeling the productive energy of process thought and are responding in some way according to their backgrounds and studies. Here it is...

R.E. Slater

April 18, 2021

Peter Rollins: friends are friends forever

https://trippfuller.com/2021/04/17/peter-rollins-friends-are-friends-forever/

April 17, 2021 By Tripp Fuller

Peter Rollins returns to the podcast and we have a bunch of fun.

Pete’s past visits:

• Peter Rollins Casts Out a Demon & Plans a Middle School Purity Retreat #theologybeercamp
• Tony Jones & Peter Rollins on #TheGreatDebacle
• Soapbox Blabbery with Peter Rollins & Tony Jones
• Paul w/ Daniel Kirk & Peter Rollins
• Paul: Rupture, Revelation, & Revolution [High Gravity class w/ Peter Rollins]
• Plundering Religion with Kester Brewin, Peter Rollins, & Barry Taylor #Mutiny
• Bootlegged Christianity with Philip Clayton, Jack Caputo, Bill Mallonee, Peter Rollins, & Jay Bakker
• #PodcastDay Surprise with @PeterRollins
• Revelation of Darkness LIVE Event: Taylor’s F-it Theology, Rollins reaches behind the curtain
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Lacan - If God is Dead Nothing is Permissible and All Things Become More Oppressive

If God is Dead Nothing is Permissible:

Some Thoughts on Secularism

http://peterrollins.net/2014/12/if-god-is-dead-nothing-is-permissible-some-thoughts-on-secularism/

by Peter Rollins
[with additional commentary by re slater]

December 12, 2014

Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov once claimed, “if God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” This famous line captures the common wisdom that the death of a supreme authority enables people to live in a freer way. Without an external sovereign authority offering prohibitions people can throw off their shackles and construct their own reality.

It can initially seem surprising then that Lacan gave his own spin to this saying by teaching that the death of God can actually mean that nothing is permitted. In this claim he is not only questioning the idea that the loss of an external soverign power means freedom, but he is also playing off a line in the Bible where Paul claims, “for me all things are permissible, but not all things are helpful.”

Not only is Lacan saying that the death of God doesn’t rid society of certain prohibitions, he goes further by saying that the death of God can lead to an even more oppressive type of prohibition.

To understand what this might mean we should begin by briefly describing an evolutionary myth Freud created to make sense of some of his findings in the clinic. The story involved going back to the very beginnings of civilization and imagining how human society took shape. In Moses and Monotheism he wrote of how humans lived together in a primordial pack held together via the leadership of a father/master figure. This powerful master created and enforced various laws that everyone needed to obey, laws that worked for the master’s own benefit and ensured his power.

This master controlled all the sexual relations of the primordial horde, ensuring the satisfaction of his own lusts at the expense of others.

Freud went on to write of how the community conspired together to kill the father. They planed this act of rebellion so as to break free from the tyranny of the father and enjoy open sexual relations.

They succeed in killing the master, but the surprising result is not more freedom. Instead the community experiences guilt over the murder and sets about memorializing the dead master. In doing this, the community internalize the prohibitions that were once externally imposed. Instead of entering into a freer, more sexually liberated community; they end up becoming their own oppressors, setting up rules to regulate their actions.

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[Addendum: I can't help thinking of Jesus' death and its meaning to the world; or to us; or in Jesus' absence the coming of age of more rules from the church, the very community which worships Jesus. - re slater]

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The point of the story was to make sense of a common scene in the psychoanalytic clinic, namely the neurotic who is not freed from the strict prohibitions of their parents when those parents die, but who continue to experience those prohibitions when the parents are nowhere to be seen. What one finds is that the individual has internalized the demands, making them a part of their subjective life. It is no longer the actual parent who is judging them, they are judging themselves from the perspective of the dead parent. The prohibition thus persists as a shadow on the inner wall of the individual.

To illustrate the difference between these, Žižek has contrasted two types of parent. The first tells their protesting child that they have to go and see their granny. The unwilling child experiences this as an external demand being imposed in order to limit her freedom.

But then there is the “enlightened” liberal parent who, instead of making an oppressive demand on the child to visit granny, attempts to guilt the child into going,

“Granny loves you, you really should go. You wouldn’t want to be selfish, would you?”

In this second case the child doesn’t just have to go to see their granny, but actually has to internalize the demand and make it their own. In the first the child can maintain a sense of inner protest by fighting against the authority figure, but in the latter they become their own oppressors. They have to go, and they have to like it.

Interestingly, the latter can be more oppressive than the former, because there is nowhere you can escape the gaze of the parent. In the former, one can transgress when the parent isn’t looking, while in the latter the gaze is always present like Bentham’s famous Panopticon. Indeed Žižek has even drawn out an interesting theological reading of the command, “you shall have no other gods before me.” Here he shows how this can be read as God saying, “You can have gods, but just be discreet, don’t do it where I can see.” This is analogous to the relationship where a couple say, “we can have affairs, just don’t talk about it.” In other words, the external authority always allows for a minimal space of transgressive maneuver.

This is why Žižek makes the point of saying that the first act of the revolutionary today is to cut against themselves, for we have become willing participants in our own oppressive systems. Systems that are even more pervasive now that secular society prides itself on being free of some divine sovereignty. We are not being forced to find meaning in consumerism, for example, we have internalized this message for ourselves. We can’t look at some external authority that must be overcome. That authority dwells within us even when we experience it bearing down on us (e.g. when we experience the oppression of our own desire to purchase products).

For Lacan, the death of a sovereign authority doesn’t lead to freedom, for the law that is externally imposed is internalized so that it becomes even more oppressive (at a more basic level this can be described as something which marks the very creation of our ego, but we won’t go into that here).

This can help us understand why Radical Theologians are skeptical of modern secular humanism. For the freedom often claimed by humanists can be seen as anything but freedom.

One may no longer believe in an all seeing eye watching everything, for example, but we might find no problem embracing the proliferation of surveillance technology. Our society may tacitly embrace a militarized police force, clandestine Government agencies, black hole prisons etc. even though they provide the same limits that religion once played. The external divine authority has been replaced with a sovereignty that is structurally the same, but has been internalized into the society’s unconscious. We not only are forced to live in it, we are encouraged to enjoy, defend it and constantly feel it. We are asked to embrace our oppression.

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In (psycho)analytic terms, an individual neurotic does not need to simply embrace the death of the parents in order to free themselves from a potentially oppressive regime, they need to find freedom from the parents law as it has been integrated into their subjectivity.

The complex move that has to be made here is for the internalized dead parents to realize that they are dead. What this means is that our own subjective system of prohibitions has to confront its own non-existence.

A person can easily say something like, “My dad disapproved of me doing X, but now he’s dead he can’t judge me” while still finding themselves feeling deeply guilty when doing X. The internal structure needs to experience it’s own death. Something Lacan referred to as the moment in which we confront the non-existence of the Big Other.

This is why people like Zizek remain interested in Christianity, for in their radical reading they see something much more shocking than the secular proclamation of God’s non-existence. Instead they see the fundamental Christian move as involving both the internalization of the death of God (the Crucifixion as subjective experience), alongside the experience of this internal God discovering its own impotence (“Why have you forsaken me”).

This theological shock therapy corresponds to what we might call the psychoanalytic cure. In the cure the individual not only intellectually comes to terms with the death of the external authority, but is freed from the internalized form of that authority (the super-ego) through experiencing that authority confrontating its impotence. This opens up a different way of living that can be described as a love that fulfills/abolishes the law (Resurrection life in theological terms).

The individual who has broken free of sovereignty (in both its substantial sacred and shadowy secular form), is able to live a life of love in which their acts arise from an experience of joy rather than internal coercion.

From this perspective one can say that traditional forms of religion function as a type of external prohibitive authority structure while modern society tends to exhibit an internal prohibitive authority structure. In contrast to both of these, radical communities (like ikon and ikonNYC) are attempts to deconstruct sovereignty in its external and internalized ways so that a different type of life can emerge. Something that is captured beautifully in the saying, “There was once an Englishman so brave, not only did he not believe in ghosts, he wasn’t even afraid of them.”

One can still talk of a type of sovereignty in this third space, but it functions in a significantly different way. To understand this we need only think of parents with a newborn child. The parents might say, “our child is the most beautiful person in the world.” However they don’t mean this in some objective way. It is a truth they affirm while knowing that it is a truth told from their subjective standpoint, a truth without objective foundation. This is why they don’t say, “our child is average looking.” For, again, this would be an attempt at objectivity. The parents are caught up in love for the infant and would sacrifice so much for the child. But the sacrifice is not felt as an oppressive demand. It is joyously affirmed and arises from their love. It is this type of joyous commitment to the world arising from love that is opened up in the death of sovereignty in its sacred and secular forms.

- Peter

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Addendum

Hence, by removing the guilts and the laws within us - or our ego or Superego (though I do not personally identify our Superego as God; for myself, God is a very real entity unassociated with my speculation of Him) - through Jesus and by His Holy Spirit the Christian may begin a new way of living life. A life moved by redemption's freedom to express God-centered love to self and towards others not as an obligation but as "re-imaged re-creators" through Him who recreated us in Jesus and by Jesus' atonement.

Thus, we may respond to life even as our Father God would respond to life Himself - not as rule-givers and law-makers but as well-centered people willing to respect and honor each other in mutual affirmations of love. And by this act, or belief, a response in love may be shared with all that this can mean in a recreation from guilt-based and law-filled lives seeking a way out from self's oppressive regimes (something Paul would call the "old man". But this is not to deny sin, nor identify sin as a guilty conscience, etc.) but to put our sin - including the sins of our oppression - to death by releasing God's redeeming love from within us to the world beyond. Thus is the power of Jesus' resurrection and His Holy Spirit. Hence and so forth, this then is what is meant to be "life-bearers" and "life-givers" in Jesus.

- re slater

Rebecca Trotter - Defiance is a Christian Virtue

Defiance is a Christian Virtue
http://theupsidedownworld.com/2011/11/18/defiance-is-a-christian-virtue/

by Rebecca Trotter

November 18, 2011

Comments

The moments in my life that have been most sure and which have left me with the most peace and joy have been moments of defiance. The times when, even though no one else would get it, I knew the path I needed to take forward and I took it. These are my reckless moments. Those things that caused offense, consternation, even concern for my sanity among those watching.

I am often a very cautious person. I don’t go shopping without knowing what I’m going to buy and how much I’ll pay for it. I skip the “trust” part of “trust, but verify” and go straight to verify. I can explain the things I do and the choices I make down to a level of detail that could put a hyper-active 7 year old to sleep. I think of what I’m going to say before dialing the phone. I think of questions I can ask people and topics to discuss before I get into conversations. I bite my tongue often. I handle my relationships with kid gloves lest I damage them or hurt someone unintentionally.

So these moments of defiance must seem out of character to anyone who doesn’t understand what’s going on beneath the surface. But these moments of defiance are my most true moments. They are the moments when what is beneath rushes to the surface and propels me forwards, regardless of all the consequences. Because I already know all the consequences. And not one of them – not disapproval, the loss of relationships, poverty, pain or anything else – is nearly enough to stop me from doing what I know I need to do. I can be reckless because I know that I’m doing something I have been specifically called by God to do or because I know that the damage done to myself if I do not do them is far greater than any of those consequences could be. I can be defiant because I have examined the matter through and through and I know that it’s coming from a pure place in my spirit. You have to be willing to be defiant if you are going to follow God and allow him to restore your heart.

This defiance is something I love about Christianity. The bible is filled with people recklessly defying expectations, norms, social pressures, sometimes reality itself. When Peter or Paul sat in a prison cell, often beaten, and sang songs of praise to God, that is defiance. When Hosea married a faithless woman and wooed her back to himself over and over, that’s defiance. When the woman with her jar of perfume washed Jesus feet with her hair, that was defiance.

Some of the strangest stories in the bible are one where God appears to approve of or reward those breaking the rules. The prophets who bargained for a better deal from God to protect their people from the full blast of God’s wrath. Jacob who deceived his own father and wrestled with God. The parable of the crooked steward who bargained with his master’s debtors to gain favor with them when he realized he was going to be fired or even imprisoned. These are all stories of people who said, “not good enough” and bargained, schemed and acted to forge a different path in defiance of all expectations.

Jesus’ entire life and ministry were defiant. He wasn’t the warrior the Jews were looking for. He talked to people he wasn’t supposed to talk to. Made outcasts - the inconsequential and the unclean - the heroes of his stories. When faced with an attempt to force him into a damned if you do – damned if you don’t choice (should we pay taxes? stone the adulteress?), he found a third answer no one else had seen before. He broke rules that were misinterpreted and misapplied and made those who tried to shame him for it look the fool. When he did not even say a word to stop his own execution, it wasn’t the enemy gaining the upper hand as it appeared, but a defiant willingness to walk a path no one could have predicted. And in the end, he defied death itself.

All these millenia later God is still calling us to be faithfully defiant. So we sing through our tears. Forgive the unforgivable. Confront those who spread pain, fear and suffering about them. Love the filthy and mean and undeserving. When we serve small children and drug addicts and those left behind. When we fall down and get back up and fall down and get back up and repeat as many times as it take until we succeed or we die, we are faithfully defiant.

This sort of defiance is freedom and peace and goodness in action. It washes away doubt, discards baggage, untangles unhealthy entanglements. When we follow in the footsteps of the defiant faithful who have gone before, we truly are taking the road less traveled. It’s not paved or smooth or even particularly safe. It’s the narrow winding road that few find and fewer stay on. Often to those watching, it looks like we’re wandering in the wilderness with no direction and no sense. And yet, as long as we continue to use our spiritual eyes, nothing can convince the faithfully defiant to abandon it for the more sensible, well traveled path. Because a journey begun in faithful defiance is guaranteed to lead us closer and closer to God – no matter how dire our circumstances. If we end up alone, despised, poor, crushed and even dead, we do so gladly, in defiance of all expectations and external pressures. And I would rather be crawling on my belly in filth and misery along the narrow way than walking in comfort on the wide path that my God has told me leads to no where I want to be.

140 years ago, a man and his family were living a blessed life. The father was a successful lawyer, with healthy children and a wife who was admired and respected in the community. They lived in Chicago where the family fortune was largely invested in a thriving real estate market. They moved in prominent circles and were good friends of DL Moody, the famed evangelist. 139 years ago, their only son died at age 4. 138 years ago the family’s wealth was wiped out in the great Chicago fire. 137 years ago, the man placed his beloved wife and four daughters on a ship to England to start a new life in England working with Moody. He stayed behind to attend to loose ends before following them across the sea. But the ship his family was on collided with another ship on the open sea. His precious daughters were ripped from their mother’s arms by the force of water that sank their ship in only 12 minutes and drowned. On the voyage across the ocean to join his wife in her grief, one of the great, defiant songs of Christianity was written. Because defiance is a Christian virtue:

David Phelps, "It Is Well With My Soul"