Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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

Showing posts with label Theologian - Catherine Keller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theologian - Catherine Keller. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Christianity in Process - 2a, Catherine Keller










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Christianity in Process
Joining God in World Solidarity

June 7, 2022

I am so pumped to have Catherine Keller back on the podcast and helping to kick-off our new HBC class – Christianity in Process (which starts this week). This conversation is peak zest!

In this conversation we discussHow Catherine Keller found Process theology via John Cobb’s Christ in a Pluralistic Age

  • the problem of evil and suffering
  • the Omnipotent deity inspiring atheism
  • the lure of Whitehead’s vision for Keller
  • at the intersection of process feminism & panentheism
  • Keller shares about the process of teaching Process Theology
  • what is theopoetics?
  • the presence and purpose of God in the midst of suffering
  • what is role of mystery for the theologian?
  • reflecting on the participatory language of the New Testament
  • Prophecy is NOT Prediction – it is a dream reading!

Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in The Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University.

If you are new to Catherine Keller and Process Theology this is the book to start with – On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity In Process.



Katherine Keller joins Christianity in Process




Previous Podcasts with Catherine Keller


Catherine Keller is George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in The Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University. 

If you are new to Catherine Keller and Process Theology this is the book to start with - On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity In Process.


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PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT (unedited)

Helen, to kind of, you know, in a sense Luer everyone does spend more time with them.

Yeah, thank you that interrupt me if I go on too long.

You interrupt you. If you talk about like its concept of God and what the Lord view if I do that, Catherine, I will have to ground myself. Alright. I just want to say no, all day long. I was like, I'm going to ask this question I want you to ask it, but what about me? We'll see what the initial aim is.

Yes, right. So I should say just, you know, in terms of that, that this background motivations and experience of the contradiction with suffering was was big. After that period of my life by the time I was finishing high school, I had become a feminist that was then in the early 70s, and, and light and I went to seminary as a feminist and because I got some signal that there was something called feminist theology that was just beginning. Like the first book, by Rosemary Radford, Ruth was out. There was Mary Daly's, beyond God the Father that exploded just as I went to seminary. So the feminist question the criticism of God as a big patriarch and heaven, that was already really important to me before process thought, and I was drawn to mysticism, and that that was that was before so this just to have that forcefield clear that that that then was really needing an understanding of God if I was going to stay a Christian that was not about the divine patriarch and his super son. And so I, I was very fortunate to encounter through this divine era us this opening into Whitehead and then to John Cobb, a whole new understanding of the god world relationship, and I am quite comfortable calling it pan and theism I think John Cobb doesn't really like to use that language so much, but it's not a deep disagreement but the notion of pan and theism and that all is within God fits I think, with my mystical sensibility, you know, sort of this, this divine infinity in which everything lives and breathes and has its being, though most of us are pretty unconscious of it most of the time at this time. So that that basic sense of all being in God and God, therefore being in all and all things, beer and all things in some interestingly, endlessly varied and perspectival way that's very mystically meaningful to me. And I found I found that in in this process, vision of the relationship of God to the world

relationship that's beginningless and endless, and that startles people that we don't have just this sort of once for all priyad co X ne Hilo, the creation from absolutely nothing at some single point of time or at all beginning of time by an absolute, omnipotent act of will. That's the traditional view. I've written a whole book demonstrating that it's not the biblical view, and that it's not the process view. basis the deep looks at that second verse of Genesis says there's no nothing there. There's you there's already be Earth toe level, who the earth and a kind of freeform state and there's darkness over the face of this endless deep and there's the spirit hovering over the my in the sea, there's no nothing. There's an eternal God eternally in relationship to this potentiality and there is a point where it begins to take the form of this world, this universe and and who knows what other ones there have been our Yeah, but this one, yes. This one bangs on in and that so that that sense of, of God not creating from an absolute nothing that's crucial. In Process theology. And the world doesn't just then unfold from an absolute nothing to some absolute end. You know, the endpoint and I've written a couple of books on the apocalypse showing that the biblical apocalypse is not the end. It's the end of the book. But it's a new beginning. And it's not just some supernatural thing after everything's destroyed. No, there's lots of destruction as there has been as there will be, but it's not an absolute ending any more than an absolute beginning. And that's very Whitehead in I've just tracked it out in more biblical terms over the course of my life thinking and writing, communicating with folks. So the sense of the god world relationship is everlastingly going on that God's always entangled in some kind of creative process. And therefore, in some kind of creation might be totally different than ours might be some world with 18 dimensions or two dimensions, who knows beyond our conception, but in our world, that creative process goes on and on and on. And on billions of years. We do know about, you know about how billions of likely galaxies now as well. So it's an almost unfashionably creative unfolding. But what some meaningful about it is it's not just the absolute controlling you know, starting point moving to the absolute controlling final judgment and then supernatural you know, bliss, that that's too simple that there is this creative involvement that characterizes the whole the whole divine process with the world right versus pride picks up that chaotic early formative art in my in my family life, and this process with, with Whitehead is never purely orderly. As he said, Yeah, so complexity for him emerges at the edge of chaos. And that's just like Genesis one, two, because the toe goes right there by those right there. So that bit me personally in my life, this sense that this divine creative engagement is at the edge of chaos. It's calling for thrush forms of Order from Chaos like I didn't know what I was going to shape in response to your question. There's a kind of watery chaos that is my mind all the time it kind of darkness over the face of it. And you ask a question, and it calls for, you know, some kind of response. And so our conversations creating its own order right now, but it's a fresh order. It's not when we have all worked out in advance. Our past work comes into what our past worlds our past stages of this relationship, but something fresh is unfolding. And maybe what we call God is is inviting that. So that's what I see happening. God is inviting and experiencing everything happening in the world. That all sounds terribly positive. And of course, a lot of things that are happening in the world are but a lot of things are not nearly as positive. It's like this conversation. There's a war going on. There's unbearable suffering in the world going on. What's so important about process theology is God's there in that in that suffering, but still calling every being suffering, that God is not the cause of that suffering. God, God has called forth and keeps calling for a very free world with increasing levels of freedom. The more complex the creature is, the more choices it has to make, the more rich the complexity of a world or have a society or have a creature. The more room for error there is, the more creative possibilities there are, the more possibilities for destruction. And so we're in a world that's way more full of destruction and then a universe where maybe there will just be little quantum electronic bursts of energy. That might be very lovely, but very vibrant. But God has apparently been interested in calling forth really interesting worlds, and apparently finds more interesting these levels, levels and levels of creative freedom. So what's important is that God seems to be encouraging the creativity but not controlling its outcomes. So that there's a shadow side the destructive potentials always there. And so this other thing that's so important in process thought, in addition to the idea of the lure, the initial aim from God is that whatever God happens, whatever, whatever happens, in response to God's moment by moment, call to every creature mostly unconsciously, whatever happens in response, God feels it. God doesn't just know it. God isn't just some cognitive apparatus of the universe. God is moved by everything that happened. So we hear it's not Aristotle's unmoved mover, mover, but Charles Hart so we're in dunk Hobbs teachers. Most moved roofer God is moved by everything that happens God that which means God is affected. God feels whatever happens and that means that God suffers with those who suffer. So God, God doesn't fix it. God isn't the fix it man of the universe. That God isn't there to take control. And that's what an intervention is. God can just keep calling other preachers, others to come to support God can call for more compassion, more love than others, if they will respond, that God doesn't fix it. God calls for the repair of the world and Tikun Olam, but God doesn't. doesn't do it. But God, God feels with the feelings of the creature. So this compassionate God this is very different from the dispassionate God that so many of us have received from our traditional Christianity. So it's a it's a, it's a passionate and compassionate relationship to the world. It's not dispassionate and yet, it's passion and it's compassion. This divine engagement is never that of control. It's always that of a relation of internalization and then calling to the new moment offering the new possibility offering perhaps, a better possibility.

This is a brief technical question in a moment of God in the world interacting. How do you understand in your process perspective, the role of the past coming into it, the role of the of the luer coming towards it. And, and you mentioned in what you were saying the creatures agency that the complexity of the creature and its attentiveness, like where it's directing, it's kind of Consciousness Changes the kind of the level of responsiveness How would you describe that because I feel like that is a of one of those. I don't know, nuggets of insightfulness that when you understand how a process thinker is picturing the way the past and the possible, in some sense kiss and each moment of becoming then then you can start to work out a lot of the theology but that's one of the unique parts I think about a process pain in theism. is it's not about space, where there's some infinite space and all the finite things are in it and the nice substances wrapped up in an infinite substance. The pantheism is something that happens moment to moment all these little God world kisses and they see how much arrows of the Divine insistence finds existence in the response.

Yeah, it is a very intimate presence of the infinite in every finite moment of experience. Yeah, so it's not a great static infinite spaciality. But it's the space time of happening. About happening. Yeah. It's a cosmic habit they get there are billions times billions of happenings, but our focus is always drawn to what's happening. Here. Now, here now because here now is in some sense, receiving everything that has already happened to the universe, but from a very limited perspective. So yeah, you ask the question beautifully, it's really a question about the the past, the present and the future. Because into each each present moment of becoming which is what the creature is as what you are is it that's what I am we are moments of becoming right now. And right now and right now. So you trip are slightly different from the trip. Have a moment go at a moment ago and slightly different, not so different that we need to change our names. But there's continuity there's rigorous deep continuity, but the the for Whitehead different process thought be the actual occasion, the actual subject is the is the event here and now. That is shear present tense. But that shear present has what as its content, the whole past its whole history. So the past flows in that's our relations even you are in my past there. It takes a split second, for for my retina to my hearing to process, the wavelength, visual and auditory coming from you know that sort of anything we can see with our senses. It takes some split seconds to process so everything that is the content of the present is an influx from the past the immediate past but also the deep past mean I've already been talking about the really deep past like close to seven decades past of of my family history, my own personal participation in it. And all of that present, as is yours what you were telling me about your family vacation coming up and those plans that's already part of your family history. You know, those are plans. So we all and as part of my history now because I heard the story. So we we have the whole history of ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, that our nations our planet as well. And our universe in some way but ever more abstract. That whole history flows kind of oceanic. We like the role of a wave into the moment that wave of the universe and its past crashes on the shores of the present moment. And so that paths we take in but we have to integrate it somehow mostly unconsciously. We can't process very much consciously. We can process some of what we're perceiving some of what we remember some of what we feel but don't consciously remember we process as much as we can, moment by moment. Sometimes we're much more limited than other times and sometimes limited by traumas or by terrible educations or by formations that screen out a whole lot. Sometimes we're gifted with the richer sense of the past, flowing in with all of its complexity. That past flows into that sheer present, and we try to do what we can to integrate it and organize it. It's called the compress. It's becoming concrete to make it concrete in this actually COVID occasion of becoming. But what's what's making that really possible well in process theology, there's that lower, there's that lower and what is that lower that lower for that is the divine calling Whisper of the Divine. Well, it's a whisper of new possibility of fresh possibility of something not already exactly realized in the past, something fresh possible here and now that will allow me to integrate that past a little better than I would on my own. If I can just somehow feel that more somehow take it in. In a way you can say God is calling us from the future.

But it's not a pre established already set future. It's God offering possibilities for a richer future. And of this, this endless artists palette of possibilities that that God carries and offers so that there's that war of the future. That that calls us to integrate the past, more meaningfully, and in a way that will then offer itself more positively more constructively. More healing like to the future so it's always an incredible dance, isn't it? Yeah. But the past and the future, that you in the present have to do but you becoming already the next, the next and the next moment of your present. So it's an incredible temporality. That is, it's just so rhythmic universe is such a rhythmic dance for Whitehead, but it's a dance of the present tense and he's taking in the endless endless corral of the past and moving towards towards future, not a preset future. That's why it's not a finalist kind of eschatology of reset endpoint, but it is its own eschatology there is constantly this calling of of the future to the President making something new out of the past.

I love that but I mean, I am not surprised I do. You just demonstrate to me that you are indeed Katharine Keller, and the way moment by moment, I know but, but there's enough coherence. Like Joe Bracken Joseph Bracken is another week where you'll get a visit with would say that you deserve the title society. You know, because of the constancy of character and the provocative response. So, in you mentioned earlier, having spent some time working at faced with a deep and the doctrine of creation, and when you describe, right the the way he just did that every moment in some sense is this is this meeting of the past and the possible futures and the creaturely contribution in the present. When you mentioned kind of the Creation out of nothing isn't even in the Bible, that implies that it you know, it showed up in the tradition for a reason. Right and and you also in that book, spend some time contrasting what's happening in Genesis with what happens in the Enuma Elish, which, I mean, I read it in high school. So I imagine a lot of people are, you know it was assigned. I wouldn't I probably didn't would have been reading pagan texts, but nonetheless, they were there. I'd love for you to take some time to talk about how, as, as a process theologian, and a feminist and someone that engages in kind of deconstructive reading of texts, how Whitehead helps you look at the actual Hebrew text in Genesis, and then the kind of criticism of abstractions and the criticism of inherited interpretations of that text. It helps you pull it back to then discover this kind of generative creativity. Why would the chaos Moston such that, in some sense, was getting echoed in your previous answer, but for those that may not be familiar with the Genesis texts, and then the connection with this historical section, is historical connections, and then the kind of criticisms that feminists bring to that depiction of power and violence and such give us an invitation to what was going on in that work.

I do find I turn to that work, often. Because Because the question of the creation is constantly with us, isn't it and it haunts many of us because we think about the creation now in its particular terrestrial forum as as very fragile and we think about it environmentally and in terms of climate change. And so it becomes important to new ways to think through the story of creation. The story of creation that a lot of us received is is thought to be biblical. It's just if you look seriously at Genesis one, it doesn't it doesn't map one to it. But you know, biblical passages are all there to be interpreted. They're rich and very ancient metaphors. So x ne Hilo is fair game as an interpretation. It's just not fair to say that it's the only possible true interpretation. But yeah, so most, most folks are taught to see a god have total power, creating everything out of nothing. And of course, it's a he God and it was a patriarchal time in human history. So I'm not saying the Bible wasn't patriarchal. It's just that it presumes the maleness to because men were in charge of the social orders and Israel would have been in big trouble. It's already big enough trouble, but it hadn't, you know, drawn on its patriarchal forces. So that's in there, the patriarchy, but very differently than say the Enuma Ailish which was very influential Babylonian texts, Babylonian, Sumerian, it were typical of other ancient texts that were or you have actual warrior Gods you have Mardu as a young warrior God that a son of Tiama to sort of original goddess giving birth to the world, but he decides to lead a revolt against her imagine that he actually leads leads a little divine army of the children of Tina to kill her to consider her a monster and to kill her and to take over the universe and that's enshrined as divine truth. And then these great civilizations, that's Samaria and Babylon. So that's truly patriarchal power warrior power of control and then he reshapes permeates the world

you know, in his own image, but you don't have the warrior creation in Genesis. You have this calling forth out of out of the chaotic room like saltwater or the town, the deep and you have bought then step by step calling for saying, Let there be let there be. It's not the language of of a commandment. It's the language of invitation. You know, let there be light, and there was light. And what does God say? He says, Oh, it's good. It's like God, react responds with, with this delight to what comes forth from God's calling. So I read it as very Whitehead, as God is luring giving out these possibilities, you know, for light and then for materialization of, of actual, planetary and stellar bodies and then for creatures of different kinds and complexities. And the elements cooperate, God asked the waters to bring forth once the waters have come forth and asked and then the Earth has come forth. I ask the earth also to bring forth creatures. So God seeks as much collaboration as possible in that creative process. And it's always calling calling and then saying, Oh, good. And then when it's all together a manifest that's the that's all. That's when God says. Very good. Some Christians grow up thinking it's because we've been created in the image of God. That's why God says very good. No, it's all things together. And God saw that it's very good, including us. Very special, interesting creatures. So you can see how I got all into that, that exegesis of that text because it seemed to suggest an alternative kind of power even though it's, you know, from about 3000 years ago, possibly, or at least 2500. And still patriarchal, but it's opening up to another understanding of power that feminist theologians could work with, you know, we didn't have to just cut ourselves off from from the biblical tradition. We could we could hear something calling there and see how it keeps calling and finds perhaps its most radically gentle voice in in Jesus of Nazareth. And how that that callings are pretty good where God's creation then in one of the parables is like, like a sea being so that's the power of God to just distribute seeds. It's a perfect image of the divine law are the seeds of possibility. are distributed, and it's up to us to respond and we might respond like stone or like hard ground or like something with thorns is the one that or we might respond like, like good Earth. And really let it let this define more. It take root in us with us. So that's sort of how I do my own feminist, you know, Christian, theological reading of the Bible in in process. terms.

One of the things that strikes me about what you just said, is in many ways, both in thinking through the parables and the way it depicts Divine Presence and activity, thinking through the Genesis, Texas that there are unspoken presuppositions that lie at the heart of most of the kind of the dominant Imperial patriarchy or friendly Christianity, right like it one of the things you do, I think, well in both of those examples is like, I mean, even the Genesis texture like well, there's, there's this see, there's the formless void, and all that's prior to anything happening. Just like you're like, Well, if you take the Bible literally right, there's all these things there God is second and then in that's not you projecting that's like just reading right in the text does not say God creates them, right the sea and the formless void but creates within them and there so in some sense, the legacy of hierarchy patriarchy this top down coercive interventionist want logic of the One Power turns the prime Okay, the primal chaos into a threat and it's not a threat to creation. It's a very place creation takes place. And I think that same kind of thing happens when you take the teachings of Jesus or you know, in the parable of the seeds, or there's so many places where the actual language of Scripture describes something that coheres much more closely to a process vision. But then those unspoken presuppositions we have, then tell us like, well, as you begin to execute this text, here are the assumptions we should be we should begin with. What has been your experience as someone that has spent years introducing kind of critical faithful reflection on the Christian tradition to future ministers at coming up against those unspoken presuppositions? It what does it mean to wrestle with them in positive ways? Because I imagine some people taking the class spending six weeks with John, hearing from different process theologians are like, Oh, I love this stuff. This is amazing. Oh, we're going to talk to Catherine's Great. Others are sitting there with those presuppositions they've internalized and assumed like this has to be and then they probably already pulled out their Bible to make sure that we weren't making that up. You know, as someone who doesn't just think process and theologically but the process of teaching Do you have do you have wisdom as to how we process undoing and thinking through those unspoken presuppositions?




Thursday, May 27, 2021

Meet Catherine Keller, Process Theologian


The Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead (*1861, †1947)
Alfred North Whitehead Project

A short introduction to the process philosophy & process theology of Alfred North Whitehead (*1861, †1947), containing several photos and 4 speakers, describing some core hypotheses of Whitehead's metaphysics. The speakers are: John B. Cobb, David Ray Griffin, Charles Hartshorne and Rupert Sheldrake.

 




TheoCon: Process Theology
Jun 24, 2020


Host - Tripp Fuller
Speaker - John Cobb
Speaker - Catherine Keller
Respondent - Sarah Lane Ritchie
Respondent - Jacob Erickson



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http://catherineekeller.com/

With immediate impact and deep creativity, Catherine Keller offers this brief and unconventional introduction to theological thinking, especially as recast by process thought. Keller takes up theology itself as a quest for religious authenticity.

Through a marvelous combination of brilliant writing, story, reflection, and unabashed questioning of old shibboleths, Keller redeems theology from its dry and predictable categories to reveal what has always been at the heart of the theological enterprise: a personal search for intellectually honest and credible ways of making sense of the loving mystery that encompasses even our confounding times. 

Biography

Catherine Keller, Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological and Graduate Schools of Drew University, teaches and writes across a wider range of contemporary theological and religious studies. After a seminomadic childhood, undergraduate studies in theology in Heidelberg, Germany, and an M.Div. from Eden Seminary in 1977, she pursued doctoral studies at Claremont Graduate School, in conjunction with the Center for Process Studies. With John B. Cobb, Jr. as her advisor, she received her Ph.D in 1984. After 3 years as Assistant Professor at Xavier University, she has taught at Drew ever since, offering seminars in the reconstruction of historical Christian doctrine.

Systematic theology, often called constructive theology in its contemporary form, involves a deconstructive as well as a creative moment.In the constructive task, Keller employs a wide hermeneutical palette, including feminist and gender studies, metaphorical, biblical, and literary readings, process and poststructuralist philosophies, and practices of ecological and social justice.

She is also a self-avowed and practicing United Methodist, who enjoys preaching and teaching in multicontextual, multireligious settings.

Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquia
Campus Extension: 3268
Office: Seminary Hall 108


Biographical Ammendment

Catherine Keller practices theology as a relation between ancient hints of ultimacy and current matters of urgency. As the George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University, she teaches courses in process, political, and ecological theology. Within and beyond Christian conversation, she has all along mobilized the transdisciplinary potential of feminist, philosophical, and pluralist intersections with religion.

Most Recent Books

  • Her most recent books invite at once contemplative and social embodiments of our entangled difference:
  • Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (April 2021);
  • Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (2018);
  • Intercarnations: On the Possibility of Theology (2017);
  • Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (2014).

Earlier Books

  • On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (2008);
  • God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys (2005);
  • Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (2003);
  • Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (1996);
  • From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (1986).


Co-Editorial Projects

Since the start of the millennium, she has served as executive director of the annual Drew University Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium. These events have yielded 12 anthologies, mostly published by Fordham University Press. Of these volumes, Keller is co-editor of:
  • Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and the New Materialisms (co-edited with Mary Jane Rubenstein);
  • Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology (co-edited with Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre and Elías Ortega-Aponte);
  • Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation (co-edited with Laurel Schneider); 
  • Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation & Relationality (co-edited with Christopher Boesel);
  • Ecospirit: Theologies and Philosophies of the Earth (co-edited with Laurel Kearns);
  • Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discourse (co-edited with Virginia Burrus);
  • Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (co-edited with Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera, published by Chalice Press).

All Books and Projects




Amazon Link

The questions raised by use of American power and the advent of an "American empire," Keller argues, reveal a deeply troubled political unconscious that is wrestling with basic religious issues of power, terror, territory, and love. Keller traces our response to the current national, international, and religious situation to the deeply fraught legacy of Christian apocalypticism. Religious and political factions both left and right, she argues, read our situation in apocalyptic terms without truly understanding that complex legacy. After diving deeply into the multiple and conflicting political and religious meanings of the Book of Revelation, she proposes a counter-apocalypse, an anti-imperial political theology of love.

Interview with Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse:
Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances



 Political Theology of the Earth with Catherine Keller



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Amazon Link


Leading scholars explore the relationship between deconstructive theory and process thought.
The similarities and creative tensions between French-based poststructuralism and Whiteheadian process thought are examined here by leading scholars. Although both approaches are labeled “postmodern,” their own proponents often take them to be so dissimilar as to be opposed. Contributors to this book, however, argue that processing these differences of theory at a deeper level may cultivate fertile and innovative modes of reflection. Through their comparisons, contrasts, and hybridizations of process and poststructuralist theories, the contributors variously redefine concepts of divinity and cosmos, advance the interaction between science and religion, and engage the sex/gender and religious ethics of otherness and subjectivity.
“Keller and Daniell break astonishingly new ground with this volume. North American process theology and philosophy are unlikely to remain the same after this collection.” — Darren J. N. Middleton, author of Novel Theology: Nikos Kazantzakis’s Encounter with Whiteheadian Process Theism
“This is a truly pioneering work. Individual authors have explored the theoretical convergence of process and post-structuralist thought, but this volume demonstrates that a number of very competent philosophers and theologians are exploring this field, opening up many avenues for future work. These writers don’t deny that differences persist between ‘constructive’ and ‘deconstructive’ postmodern trajectories, but by reinterpreting each side of the conversation, they suggest many possible points of agreement and mutually beneficial influence.” — Don H. Compier, author of What is Rhetorical Theology?: Textual Practice and Public Discourse
At Drew University, Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology and Anne Daniell is a doctoral candidate. Catherine Keller is the author of Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World and From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self.


Catherine Keller interview
Apr 16, 2016




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Catherine Keller

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Catherine Keller
CatherineKeller.jpg
Born1953 (age 67–68)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materClaremont Graduate SchoolEden Theological SeminaryUniversity of Heidelberg
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolFeminist Theology
Process Theology
Constructive Theology
Main interests
theologyprocess theologyecologyfeminismpoststructuralism

Catherine Keller (born 1953) is a contemporary Christian theologian and Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University's Graduate Division of Religion.[1] As a constructive theologian, Keller's work is oriented around social and ecological justice, poststructuralist theory, and feminist readings of scripture and theology. Both her early and her late work brings relational thinking into theology, focusing on the relational nature of the concept of the divine, and the forms of ecological interdependence within the framework of relational theology. Her work in process theology draws on the relational ontology of Alfred North Whitehead, fielding it in a postmodern, deconstructive framework.[2]

Education

Keller received a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion and Theology from Claremont Graduate School in 1984, a M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in 1977, and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) equivalent in Theology from University of Heidelberg in 1974.[3]

Academics

Keller's work stresses an interdisciplinary approach, pulling from sub-fields such as feminist thoughtenvironmental thought, and Continental philosophy. She has played a leading role in building interdisciplinary connections into, and out of, the field of theology. Since 2001 she has had a central role in directing and developing Drew University's Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium.[4] The colloquia seek to "foster a fresh style of theological discourse that is at once self-deconstructive in its pluralism and constructive in its affirmations".[5] Recent colloquia have brought theology into conversation with movements such as Queer Theory and Animal Studies, have offered novel perspectives on debates about Religion and Science, and have explored topics such as political theology. Notable scholars from outside the field of theology who have participated in the colloquia in recent years include: William E. ConnollyKaren BaradGayatri Chakravorty SpivakDaniel Boyarin, and Amy Hollywood.

With John CaputoRoland Faber and others, Keller provides leadership in the field of theopoetics.[6]

Works

Books

  • From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Der Ich-Wahn: Abkehr von einem.
  • Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
  • Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. London: Routledge, 2003.
  • God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005.
  • On the Mystery: Discerning God in Process. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008.
  • Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
  • Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Edited

  • Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms (with Anne Daniell), N.Y.: SUNY, 2002.
  • Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (with Mayra Rivera and Michael Nausner), St. Louis: Chalice, 2004.
  • Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (with Virginia Burrus), New York: Fordham Press, 2006.
  • The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God: a Political, Economic, Religious Statement (with David R. Griffin, John B. Cobb, Jr,. Richard A. Falk), Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.
  • Ecospirit: Theologies and Philosophies of the Earth (with Laurel Kearns), New York: Fordham Press, 2007.
  • Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation (with Laurel Schneider), New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2011).
  • Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (with Mary-Jane Rubenstein), New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Catherine Keller: professor of constructive theology drew theological school". Archived from the original on 2016-04-04. Retrieved 2014-07-14.
  2. ^ "Polydoxy: Theology of multiplicity and relation". Archived from the original on 2014-07-23. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
  3. ^ "CURRICULUM VITAE of Catherine Keller". Archived from the original on 19 April 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  4. ^ "Catherine Keller: Professor of Construction Theology Drew Theological School"depts.drew.edu. Archived from the original on 4 April 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  5. ^ "Drew University Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium: About".
  6. ^ "Process Perspectives" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-07-15.

External links