Quotes & Sayings


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----

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

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

R.E. Slater - Essays with John Cobb: Processual Immortality



Essays with John Cobb:
Processual Immortality

by Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr.
June 1998

Is God Personal?

Publication Month: June 1998
Dr. Cobb’s Response

Editing of Content Structure by R.E. Slater

I.

Question

Dr. Cobb, I’ve just started reading C. Hartshorne’s Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. The one response I find least satisfactory is his observation on immortality. What are your views?

Response by Dr. Cobb

Christians have varied ideas about “immortality” and tend to cover up their differences with vague rhetoric. Behind that rhetoric I encounter three general views with lots of diversity within them:

  • Some reject any notion of a reality other than our actual experience here and now between birth and death:
  • They think that affirming anything of that sort is religiously damaging, because it encourages dualistic and otherworldly thinking.
  • They believe that it has disparaged and distorted the real values of life here and now. They also believe that there is no valid reason to suppose that any other reality exists.
  • If there is any “immortality” it lies in the reabsorption of our bodies [and works] into the ongoing processes of nature and the influence of our lives, however slight, upon the future.
  • Some believe that the Christian faith holds out the promise that in the “end” all that has been still is in some fulfilled or perfected way. Tillich, Barth, and Pannenberg all seem to assert something like this. This belief is required to undergird the meaningfulness of our otherwise utterly transient existence individually and historically.
  • Others hold to the belief in continuing life after death either immediately or after the end of history. To them simply preserving what has been is quite unsatisfactory. Christian hope is for new life, a fulfilled and transformed life.

Process theologians can be found in all three camps.

What may be thought of as “standard” process theology falls in the second one. This is Whitehead’s Consequent Nature of God and is the emphatic position of Hartshorne.

Of course, process theology has the distinctive note that it is each occasion of human experience that is retained in God (along with nonhuman occasions), and that this immortality is immediateMarjorie Suchocki has developed this notion in such a way that it incorporates many of the values of the third camp as well.
Although Whitehead’s emphasis falls here, he also recognizes that his metaphysics allows for continuing existence of primarily mental occasions after the death of the body. This is unusual in the history of philosophy, since most metaphysical systems have either demonstrated the necessary truth of personal immortality or shown its impossibility. In Religion in the Making Whitehead states that continuation of the life of the soul is a question to be settled empirically rather than metaphysically. Some process theologians believe that empirical evidence is favorable to this belief.

II.

The question is also one of judgment as to the religious value of such beliefs. It is rare that those who do not see religious value in the hope for new life after physical death judge the evidence favorable or even examine it with much interest. Hence, in fact the judgments of positive value and of factual likelihood tend to go together, although there may be some who would like to believe is such [a] life but who think that to do so would be wishful thinking.

I count myself among those who think that belief in life after death can function positively today. I say this despite the extensive harm that it has done in the past, especially when salvation and damnation were defined in terms of such post-mortem existence. Today the danger to a proper valuation of human life here and now seems to arise more from the tendency to view people as simply what they appear to be, in terms of their social functions, or, even worse, reductionistically, as what they can be seen to be in the physical sciences. The doctrine of the soul, which once functioned to disparage the body may now be needed to preserve even the body from trivialization.

Because I think there is need for an understanding of the soul that indicates its partial transcendence of the body as scientifically understood, I am interested in the evidence for this transcendence including that of the soul’s continuation beyond physical death. But my attention to this matter has been sporadic. Anyone who is seriously concerned should read David Griffin. He has an excellent chapter on this topic in God and Religion in the Postmodern World.

As that chapter shows, there is a close connection among process thinkers between interest in parapsychological phenomena generally and concern about life after death. The former, if they occur, indicate a partial transcendence of the soul in relation to the physical body. It is this partial transcendence that makes the idea of the soul’s life apart from the present physical body conceivable. Griffin has written an entire book on parapsychology, the most thorough philosophical study of this topic in this generation.

III.

Strictly speaking, the soul’s survival of death need not amount to “immortality.” Indeed, for process thought the notion of any form of creaturely existence enduring forever seems inherently implausible. The only immortality would seem to be in God, as both Whitehead and Hartshorne have emphasized.

My own way of speculating about these matters is to stress that (i) personal identity is far from complete even in this life. Also, (ii) the Christian ideal is that we love others as we love ourselves. Really to do that would mean that our concern in each moment was for the whole future that we could influence, not focused on our personal future. One who has attained to that state will not be concerned about personal continuity beyond death. But others are, and God may give us that continuity as long we need or want it. But that will not be forever.

One feature of Whitehead’s conceptuality is highlighted in discussion of this topic. It accents empirical inquiry and the diversity of faith perspectives. On most questions, therefore, it leaves open a variety of answers. Those of us who adopt his views still have to work out our own beliefs. But those beliefs will nevertheless be deeply affected by the fact that we view reality in terms of process.


* * * * * *


My Process Observations on Immortality

by R.E. Slater
November 17, 2021

I.

Process theology is as much about a process-based philosophical view of life as it is theological. That is, however we come to know process philosophy is to that degree how it may better help to explain our ideas of God, life, living, duty, calling, work, church, and society among other things.

At once, process thought states that whatever is happening here in this life, in our mortal state of being and becoming is exactly what is happening everywhere else throughout creation and any other non-matter or spacetime form anywhere else. In Platonic terms, process is process whether here or in the next life. In non-Platonic terms, process is a constant whether here with us now or with God now or with God later when we are no longer living. Process is a constant throughout God's world both physical and spiritual.

That said, then immortality should be no different now in this life then it will be in the next life, whether we go on as bodiless souls or we simply cease to exist and become part of the process flow of the universe. Let me say that the Christian hope is that all souls continue onwards after death but process thought does allow for both this idea as well as the idea that our souls - like the cosmic soul - simply folds into the process flow of history and event no different then as it currently doing so now. In either sense, our lives and live's work continues in God in one manner or another. 

This does not particularly bother me as my trust is in God to do the right thing by the creation He breathed onto to make it as it is both now and forever. To be the created is to be finite, mortal, in some sense ending. But in God, all is made alive and its weight - or the weight of our existential mortal moment - will not be forgot or eclipsed in God. We are and will continue in some sense to be at death because God is.

For the literal Christian hoping for crowns, friends, mansions, and healing let's simply say "yes" this may be.... However, if these bible concepts are more figurative than literal the same will still apply. There will be a sense of gratitude and wellbeing, a society of some sort, an identity found in shelter and community, and the personal healing of one's psyche, soul, spirit, mind and heart. All things are because God is. God is the First Process which gives all other processes its energy, flow and future in becoming beyond any becoming we could realize in our lifetimes or in the lifetimes to come.

II.

In part II above Dr. Cobb wishes to convey that this life be product NOW. To useful NOW. To contribute to the meaningful flow of life's rhythms and harmonies against all that which is disruptive and harmful to the processual flow of life.

That a proper doctrine of the soul and of others is see our lives in the love and healing of God as it can be given the many times harsh localities we must live our lives. While also viewing the same of the lives of others as contributing souls to the wellbeing of mankind and this earth.

To the extent that our doctrinal views of the soul and of mankind becomes religiously harsh or cruel to the existence of ourselves or others is the extent to which we must repent and learn to lean into healthier practices of our spiritual worship life which allows God to unchain us from our guilts and sins.

Beating or denying one's body to please God is usually not what is meant by God who has granted us breath and health to positively contribute into this life be it ever so humble as that with a spouse, a family, a community or church. We are unable to do this if we have starved ourselves from unusefulness, become overly sensitive or crushed by guilt and shame, or harmed ourselves in ways that we are the ones needing ministry rather than giving ministry to both the harmed and the damaged as will as the whole and healed.

Repentance in Jesus starts with personal health. It does not condone harm to self or others. But it does request we submit to God and learn to love ourselves as God loves us and wishes us to be, as we can be, given the constraints of our circumstances.

III.

I like the idea that we are building into immortality the works of our mortal life. Simply, any work done which is loving and healing does now transfer immediately in this life and "the next" into meaningful flows of processual being and becoming. That our lives are never fully realized, nor can be, but in God, all things can be brought to fruition and multiplied over-and-over again by His Spirit.

To live our lives unconcernedly about either death or immortality and to live our lives concernedly as fully as we can, by God's good graces, now with our loved ones and to all we would meet. It is to God we live, and move, and have our being. All other concerns are light and passing in this life. Be who we are and do it as well as we can given our frailities and temptations and trust God to make up the difference which we cannot, in ourselves, make up.

This is the promise of life in God both now and everlastingly. That God can and will use all that we give Him and use it wisely, folding it into the everlasting flows of life both now and future as given to us by the Lord of Life and Saviour of our Souls.

R.E. Slater
November 17, 2021

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Hegel and Whitehead - Divine Process Panentheism & Immanency




As introduction to Classic Theism, I submit Mtabaczek's article below. Unlike process theology's approach, classic theology sees God in very Platonic and neo-Platonic ways. Whereas process theology sees God, well, in very different ways, such as openness of future, experientialism, personalism, and relationalism, to mention a few. Below you will find the classic theistic portrayal of its God in positive ways as versus process' panentheistic approach seen by classicism in negative ways. In the blog piece before this I began a discursive which may serve as introduction to this piece here.

        - R.E. Slater, November 16, 2021



Hegel and Whitehead: Panentheism

February 2, 2014


I have just posted a new sub-page on my blog, which will contain abstracts and links to my official publications. I will try to explain the content of each one of them in several steps.

My first article in English was published in May 2013 in Theology and Science, a journal edited by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley. It’s title is quite sophisticated: Hegel and Whitehead: In Search for Sources of Contemporary Versions of Panentheism in the Science–Theology Dialogue. You can read an abstract here.

First of all, what is panentheism about? It all goes back to one of the main concerns of our reflection about God, which has been the source of struggle for theologians over the centuries. On the one hand we acknowledge that God is totally different and unlike anything that we know by our sensual experience and intellectual reflection. God is totally and absolutely transcendent. He is omniscient (knows everything), omnipotent (can do everything), eternal, and above all – unchangeable. Therefore – according to St. Thomas Aquinas – while our relation to God is real and changes us, this same relation on the side of God is only a relation of thought (reason), because it cannot change God nor add anything to His essence which is pure act, without any hint of potentiality.

Comment: "Process Theology takes these same subjects and brings God near (immanent); learning experientially from creation as it recreates itself moment by moment as He had designed it; stresses all loving over power and control thus avoiding problems of theodicy and freewill; everlasting, which basically says the same thing as eternally but puts the stress on the presence of God's everlastingness into the here-and-now of His creation; and changeable in God's emotions towards His moment-by-moment immanent experience of creation even has God's character or attributes are unchanging re God's everlasting love, goodness, justness, forgiveness, mercifulness, and etc." - re slater

On the other hand we have to acknowledge that God is radically immanent, that is He is present in the world and all its aspects. Saint Thomas defines the very act of creation as a total dependence of every creature in its being on God. God is the source of the very existence of everything. Were he not present in contingent beings at every moment of their existence, they would perish at once. They actually exist because they participate in the infinite being of the Creator.


And here comes the question: how does one bring God’s transcendence and immanence together into one model of His divine action? One of the possible answers goes back to Pseudo-Dionysius (5-6th century), and was further developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. It names three ways of our speech about God:

  1. The positive way enables us to formulate positive statements about the Creator. We may say for instance that God is good, and His goodness is revealed in creation (God’s immanence).
  2. But at the same time we must acknowledge that He is not good in the way that we are good. In other words, God’s goodness is unlike our goodness. This is the way of negation. Following it we realize that it is more appropriate for us to say what God is not, rather than what God is (God’s transcendence). And yet the connection with our human categories is not totally rejected. 
  3. The third way – the way of eminence – saves it, claiming that God is good, but in an eminent way, which goes beyond any kind of goodness known to us. God is the source of all goodness, as His goodness is identical with His essence. This way of speaking about God is based on the doctrine of analogy, which I hope to explain in a separate entry.

This way of bringing together transcendence and immanence of God saves both of them and supports the classical Thomistic model of God- world relationship which I describe on the left side of the diagram below.

click to enlarge; process theology uses the panentheism model

Aquinas’s view of God-world relation remained in a radical opposition to pantheism (the middle model on the diagram), which assumes that the world is God and God’s essence is exhausted in the world taken as a whole (an idea coming back today in the New Age and other “ecological” spiritual movements). However, commonly accepted and supported throughout the centuries, the classical model of Aquinas has been recently accused (beginning from the late 19th century) of overemphasizing God’s transcendence. God who does not have a real relationship towards His creation – says the main charge – is not the God of love. If creation cannot affect God [transcendence model], then God is not concerned with what is happening in the world. He is a [pantheist] God of the philosophers [classic theologians], but not of the Bible. [brackets are mine own - re slater]

As a remedy to this crisis, some theologians proposed a new model of God-world relationship – panentheism. It suggests that the world is in God (a link to pantheism), and yet God is more than the world (a link to classical theism of Aquinas). See the right-hand model on the diagram above. Proponents of this version of God-world relation suggest that because the world is in God, it has to affect God, therefore He is not unchangeable anymore, and His eternity is affected by time. Moreover, when creating the world God decides to limit his omniscience and omnipotence, in order to make a space for our freedom and contingent events in the world. He is not a detached ruler, but a fellow sufferer who understands. And yet – according to panentheism – God is still transcendent, because He is more than the world.


The panentheistic model has become very popular, and found many applications in contemporary theology, especially in the circles of theology and science debate, where it seems to be suitable in explaining theological implications of contingency and indeterminacy of natural events. However, at the same time, it raises some basic and crucial questions. (i) The first and the most important among them refers to God’s transcendence. If the world is in God and affects God, then it has to share God’s essence (God’s nature or substance), which challenges the truth about God’s transcendence. Moreover, (ii) if creation of the world changes God and limits some of the attributes which are substantial for His divinity (e.g. omnipotence, omniscience, eternity), it is hard to agree that He is still the [same classical] God we believe in. If this is the case, then the claim of panentheism’s proponents, who say that it gives right to both God’s transcendence and immanence, simply does not hold.

Comment: "Though I've not heard this said, still, to myself it makes more sense to say that ultimately God's "wholly Otherness" is "wholly meaningless" to creation. One may argue philosophically that its important to recognize as the "wholly Other" but ontologically it makes no sense at all as this "wholly Otherness" has no meaning to the world at large. Hence, process theology can acknowledge God's "wholly Otherness" but pragmatically God's "wholly immanence" is far, far more important, crucial, absolute, necessary, and needful in any depiction of a biblical theology." - re slater

Contemporary panentheism has many faces and versions. The truth is that it also has a long historical tradition, especially in the philosophical reflection on God and God-world relationship. It’s roots go back to ancient Egypt and Greece. In my article I concentrate on two philosophical versions of panentheism: the one which was proposed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the other developed by Alfred North Whitehead. The former philosopher may be regarded as the father of the modern version of panentheism, while the latter has become very popular in the contemporary science-theology dialogue. I ask the question of the possible relation between their versions of panentheism and the nuances in their understanding of God’s transcendence and immanence.

That’s it for now. It is a prelude to the main body of the article which I hope to summarize in the next episodes under the same title: Hegel & Whitehead.


- MTABACZEK

ADDENDUM 

This took me a little time to locate as a free .PDF but here is the link below. I suspect it will be very helpful in locating the difference between Hegel and Whitehead when reading Whitehead's Process and Reality. - re slater 

R.E. Slater - Essays with John Cobb: A Processual Personal God



Essays with John Cobb:
A Processual Personal God

by Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr.
May 1998

Is God Personal?

Publication Month: May 1998
Dr. Cobb’s Response

Editing of Content Structure by R.E. Slater

I.

The answer to this, as to so many questions is Yes and No, but on the whole Yes is a better answer than No. Of course, everything depends on what is meant by “personal”. For some people, the only way God can be personal is to be very much like a human being. In the extreme case this involves attributing a body to God that resembles a human body. Obviously, the answer must then be No. If we think of God having a body, that body is the universe as a whole.

More commonly, it is only the human mind or soul or spirit that God is understood to resemble. Then the answer depends on how the questioner understands the human spirit. Often it is understood substantialistically, with the relations among human spirits, and even between spirit and body, seen as quite external. When it is clear that the questioner is thinking in this way, it is still best to begin with the answer No. God is not like another human being, only greater, when one thinks of a human being in this way. But then, from a process perspective, other human beings are not like that either!

II.

In somewhat more sophisticated imagery, questioners sometimes are asking whether the I-Thou relationship exists between us and God. Addressing God as Thou has been so central to the Abrahamic traditions that to rule out such language would mean a serious rupture. Process theology allows and affirms its use.

But the language of I-Thou suggests an over-againstness or externality that is inadequate and misleading. In Tillich’s terminology it seems to imply that God is one being alongside other beings. We need to claim the language but free it from this externalistic interpretation. Paul himself helps us to do so. He says of human beings that we are members one of another and jointly members of the body of Christ. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. The Holy Spirit is also found within. Process thought interprets this to mean that we participate in constituting the very being of one another and that the divine reality participates in constituting our being as we participate in constituting the divine reality. We are quite literally in God, and God is quite literally in us.

I-Thou language by itself does not capture this. But this is not because the relationship process thinkers affirm is less personal. The mutual immanence of all things only makes the personal character of relationships deeper, more inextricable. Process thought in this way enables us to appreciate the meaning of some of the language of the New Testament that has previously been toned down because of the metaphysical assumptions of interpreters.

Even so, this emphasis on the immanence of God seems to some to count against the idea of God as a personal being. In human interpersonal relations, we transcend one another as well as participating in one another. Does God transcend us? Of course. But is the way that God transcends us similar to the way other human persons transcend us?

No, there are differences. Other people are spatially separated from us. The locus from which they experience the world is different from the one from which we experience the world. But God is equally everywhere. Where we are, God is there, too. Or else, God as transcending creatures is “nowhere” in the sense that spatial language may not apply to God. In this way God is very different from another human person.

III.

Nevertheless, God, like other human persons, is a subject who acts and is acted upon. In Whitehead’s terminology, God is an actual entity, distinct from all other actual entities. This does not make God any more like humans than like creatures in general. On the other hand, we suppose that some human characteristics, shared with some but by no means all other creatures, are shared by God. Consciousness is an important example.

As to how much further we should go in attributing human-like characteristics to God, process theologians divide. Charles Hartshorne encourages us to think of God as a closely unified succession of actual entities in which all the past ones are fully included in the present one. Since such a succession of actual entities is just what Whitehead defines as a “living person”, Hartshorne gives a clear positive answer to the question of whether God is a person. Whitehead, on the other hand, proposes that we think of God as a single everlasting actual entity. That is extremely different from any creature, including the human one. In his terminology, then, God is not a person. Yet much of what believers have in mind when they ask whether God is a person, is present in God for Whitehead as well.


* * * * * *

My Process Observations
on a Processual Personal God

by R.E. Slater
November 16, 2021

I.

Behind the subject of "Theology Proper" (e.g., the "Study of God") in systematic language comes process theology to add or take away important details. Classical language built on Platonism necessarily covers us what non-Platonic process language is speaking to.

In order, God is not a thing no more than we are. The divine soul, like the human soul - or even the "cosmic" soul - are (living and non-living) processes in motion with one another. In Platonic imagery God is a God-like entity and humans are our own kind of entity. Separate entities yet deeply connected as between Creator to Created or God, as the First Process, to creation (or us) as the successional orders of subtending processes.

Further, the divine/human emotion of love is not a thing but a resulting feeling between Creator to His creation, or between one person to another. Love is not a thing but a feeling. I believe neo-Platonism might circumscribe such secondary interactive processes as a kind of thing or substance as well (someone correct me on this if I've strayed too far). The point being, Platonism sees creation as a world of (external and secondary) objects even as it would see God as a divine object. Thus, in a literal bible, we read of God, angels, demons, humanity, heaven, hell, etc, in objectified ways rather than as interconnecting, if not metaphysical and ontological, (divine and creaturely organic) processes.

These first two paragraphs then get to what Dr. Cobb is referring to externalistic interpretation, that is, reading the bible Platonically rather than in its process sense. One leans on an older Greek philosophy, the latter on Alfred North Whitehead's more recent observations of the world we live in, known as process philosophy. Philosophy is a way for humans to explain the world around them. In the 21st Century, given the evolutionary and quantum sciences, we are beginning to see the world not in Newtonian terms of substances but in terms of processes. 

Whitehead had observed this early on as he interacted with Hegel and other earlier ideas contemporary with his own (including much earlier non-Platonic Greek ideas of process speculation) as well as at Einstein's work both on a personal level as well as on an academic level (ahead of the idea of Niels Bohr's quantum mechanics by some 20+ years).

Process thinking was a relatively new way of looking at the classical cosmology and viewing it as a living,  feeling, organic process highly interrelated between the whole to its parts and its parts to the whole. Whereas classical science had viewed creation as a clock-work mechanism reducible to its parts, contemporary (process) science was looking at the motion and movement of those process-driven EVENTS as forming the "cosmic organism" it was looking at more in terms of energy particles and quantum forces interacting with each other rather than in terms of external , "atomic" objects interacting with one another.

II.

Next, the I-thou relationship between God and creation or God and man takes on the more broader area of panentheism v classical theism. The former centers on the immanence or "nearness" of God with creation or mankind whereas the latter concentrates on the transcendence or "farness" of God away from creation or mankind.

One of the more discussed theological ideas on the topic of God's nearness with us can be found in the subject matter of open theology and relational theology. When I came to these subjects myself based upon my study of Arminian (Wesleyan, qua Methodist) theology over that of Calvinistic (Reformed) theology, I brought both ideas together without hesitation. Thus, Open AND Relational theology, as neither should stand alone without the other.

My reasoning stood along the lines that the future is unknown and therefore as open to us as it is to God. God does not know the future even as God is intimately (or immanently) involved in the future's future as both its image-maker as well as it's designer. What I've done is go over-and-beyond classical theism's imagery of God "directing" the future in a deterministic (or controlling way) to the imagery of God being "in" or "inside" the future which is unfolding in its own process way as given to it by its process Maker. Hence, the teleological edge of creation is imbued with God's own process Image which urges a freewill creation of forces, energies, and creational "souls" forward towards "becoming" in its being, and striving for its own "wellbeing" in its "becoming." Thus, the future is open because God is open in His Love and divine freewilled Soul. God IS the process (process theology qua Arminianism) more than just being its Determiner (Calvinism)

Secondly, relational theology speaks to the freewill "soul" of the cosmos, creation, and sentient creatures. God cannot "direct" or "control" or "determine" freewilled processes but God has IMBUED freewill processes to strive towards surviving, to living (or being), to becoming beyond what it is. There is this very mystical divine urge towards the struggle of becoming. It cannot be controlled but it is this (divine) urge which propels all energies, forces, and "souls" towards interactivity with one another is a processed way in finding wellbeing within its synthesis.

Thus, to speak of Open Theology and Relational Theology is to speak of both processes working together in an intimately (or better, immanently) panrelational, panexperiential - even panpsychic - kind of way. This then begins to describe the idea of an immanent world of God and creation in a divinely intimate process way of being and becoming together. It recognizes the "otherness" of God but states God's "otherness" has no meaning to us unless God is deeply - immanently - connected with us into the very fabric of our being as God is with all of the process-based order. Transcendence then becomes both an unnecessary idea as well as a very hollow, empty Platonic idea of classicism which can immediately be jettisoned from our bible-based theological categories.

III.

Here, Dr. Cobb wishes to further explain Whitehead in terms of process immanency. Let's leave this subject matter to another time. Just know the further you go into Whitehead, the further you will go into the obscuratus and arcane linguistic semantics of the process philosophical language (aka, Process & Reality). And to the degree I've read Whitehead and been involved in it's study with John Cobb is the degree that its finer detail makes process process.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
November 16, 2021










Monday, November 15, 2021

Authoritarianism has entered the Church; but not in a good way...


Former United States president Donald Trump's photo op at St. John's Church has been
described as following the "playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over".


Constitution of the United States - The First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


Authoritarianism has entered the Church; but not in a good way...
by R.E. Slater

This morning's news of Michael Flynn's extremist speech last night at a radical right rally in San Antonio, Texas, is cause for concern to all Christians and Churches teaching an openness of dialogue, irenic critique of beliefs amid doctrinal tenents, and welcoming of all religions different from themselves as is proper in an expanding, polyplural, civil democracy of the 21st Century.

However, under the recent Trumpian era of gaslighting fundamental and conservative evangelical Christian churches, white religious nationalism (aka, white supremacy) has gained a new traction in American churches once content in arguing doctrine with one another rather than attacking the democratic institutions of the United States of America as expressed in the Constitution's First Amendment Rights.

The church in the past twenty years has changed. And not in a good way. For those interested in see how these changes have taken place I have put together a complete podcast series of 14 discussions held by Tripp Fuller with Diana Butler Bass and Brian McLaren this past Fall. All these speakers (and friends), like myself, were at one time part of the fundamental / conservative evangelical church, but have now transition to a wake-up call in Jesus to step away from any self-referential belief systems into a more expansive, and tolerant, progressive Christian frame of mind where beliefs and dogmas might be discussed more patiently with one another.

R.E. Slater
November 15, 2021


News References
November 14, 2021


MarketWatch -




One may also add multiple examples in European history
of both Catholic and Protestant authoritarianism



Religion and Authoritarianism

Most measures of religiosity, such as church attendance and affiliation, are positively correlated with the authoritarian personality cluster, which includes submission to authority, conventionality, and intolerance of out-groups. The correlation is especially strong between religious fundamentalism (defined as belief in an "inerrant set of religious teachings") and authoritarianism, both of which are characterized by low openness to experience, high rigidity, and low cognitive complexity. In particular, authoritarianism "is positively associated with a religion that is conventional, unquestioned, and unreflective".

Background

United States president Donald Trump's photo op at St. John's Church has been described as following the "playbook of authoritarian-leaning leaders the world over".

Hundreds of scientific articles have been published investigating the connections between religion and authoritarianism. There is a distinction between psychology, which treats authoritarianism as innate to the personality, and sociology, which considers authoritarianism a result of one's environment and posits that it may be influenced by factors such as religion.

A longitudinal study of Americans born in the 1920s found that this effect held for traditional church-centered religion but not for those that are seeking non-institutional spirituality. The latter mode of religion is "characterized by an openness to new experiences and by creativity and experimentation, characteristics that are antithetical to the conventionality that adheres in authoritarianism".

* * * * * * * * * *




Christianity 20 Years after 9/11/2001
by R.E. Slater

I've been finding Tripp's 14 or so podcasts on white authoritarian religious groups very relevant. These past recent years has shown to America the highly uncivil rhetoric and radical nationalism which has swept up the greater part of evangelicalism. If you, like myself, are finding yourself at a greater and greater distance from your church, family and friends, this is why.

Theo-Politicism has swept into the church and neatly divided 30% of us from our present fellowships. In these podcasts Diana has been tasked with reporting from the Pew Surveys and PRRI surveys issued recently during the discussions (the ones I listed not long ago that are always available to the public)....

Diana's religious focus is on reporting on the history of the contemporary Christian church as a religious sociologist who participates with these surveys on a regular basis and has written many books and blog articles over the years based upon her findings. You may also walk with her weekly on her website, "The Cottage".

R.E. Slater
November 15, 2021


You may subscribe free of charge -
https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/


also check youtube for more of diana's podcasts -
https://www.youtube.com/results...

and of course anything tripp fuller -
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tripp+fuller

Homebrewed Christianity -
https://www.youtube.com/results...


mine own site -
https://relevancy22.blogspot.com/



* * * * * * * *






Tripp Fuller Live Streaming W/ Diana Butler Bass
Jun 16, 2021




Invite to "Oh God, What Now?"
with Brian McLaren & Diana Butler Bass
Aug 25, 2021




Session 1
20 Years of Religious Decline
Aug 31, 2021




Session 2
The Rise of Authoritarianism
Sep 7, 2021




Q&A - Session 2
with Brian McLaren & Tripp Fuller
Sep 8, 2021




Session 3
Repentance and Resistance
Sep 14, 2021




Q&A - Session 3
with Diana Butler Bass & Tripp Fuller
Sep 16, 2021





Diana Butler Bass' Session 4 discussion | artwork by Steve Thomason



Session 4
Theology and Spirituality in a Time of Rupture
Sep 21, 2021




Q&A - Session 4
with Diana Butler Bass & Tripp Fuller
Sep 23, 2021




Session 5
Inter-Religious Learning w/ Brian McLaren
Sep 28, 2021




Q&A - Session 5
with Brian McLaren & Tripp Fuller
Sep 30, 2021




TheoCon Presentation by Brian McLaren
the Parable of the Kayakers
Jul 12, 2020


More TheoCon here - Https://Theologycon.Com



Session 6
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
with Diana Bass, Brian McLaren, and Tripp Fuller
Oct 5, 2021




Moral Injury & the War on Terror
with Army Chaplain Dr. Josh Morris
Sep 9, 2021