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 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

Saturday, May 19, 2012

American Consumerism Asks, "Are You Woman Enough?

'City Java magazine rack' photo (c) 2011, Ken Hawkins - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Enough: Or, why we should all be laughing hysterically in the magazine aisle

by Rachel Held Evans
May 16, 2012

I can’t for the life of me recall what book I read it in, but I remember an author saying once that he raised his children to be wary of consumerism by teaching them to laugh at commercials.

Like, the whole family would sit around the TV together and bust out laughing when someone from LG asked, “Is it a washer? Or something better?”

(It’s just a washer.)

I’ve decided I like this idea, particularly as a woman, who most advertisers seem to take for a complete idiot.

Case in point: Last night, Eva Longoria winked at me from the TV screen and, with a gold-colored tube of mascara between her fingers, said, “Don’t just volumize your lashes! Millionize them!”

Okay, first of all, Eva, neither “volumize” nor “millionize” are words.

Second of all, even if it were scientifically possible to “millionize” my lashes, would that really be safe? (I’m getting a creepy vision of Animal in a Muppet Special.

Millionize your lashes!

And third of all, if L’Oreal wants to join the feminist movement for real, how about they begin by not perpetuating the stereotype that girls are so bad at math and science that they’ll go out and buy a product that promises to “millionize” their eyelashes.? I mean, what’s next? A “trillionizer?” A “gazillionizer”? When you start with “millionize,” there’s nowhere else to go but crazy town.

It reminds me of the text on the back of my shampoo bottle, which promises that all my dry, frizzy hair needs is a little “fortified fruit science” and all will be well.

Fortified fruit science.

Because that’s a thing.

You gotta laugh at this stuff to keep from crying.

Same goes for the magazine aisle. Strategically placed near the checkout line at the grocery store, where, after a frustrating hour of decision-making, calorie counting, list checking, and child-bribing, women would otherwise be forced to stop, wait, and ask themselves a few questions about the meaning of their existence, the magazine aisle dazzles us with photoshopped images of super-skinny models, next to impeccably arranged place settings, next to actresses praised for losing their baby weight in five minutes, next to Martha Stewart holding a perfectly frosted chocolate cake.

As if all of those scenarios are possible at once.

The headlines say things about “10 Ways to Snag a Man” and “4 Recipes Your Family Will Love” and “29 Ways To Lose Weight And Still Eat a Donut Every Day,” but what we really read is:

Are you pretty enough?

Are you crafty enough?

Are you sexy enough?

Are you stylish enough?

Are you domestic enough?

Are you enough?

Too often, we forget to laugh at the absurdity of these questions, and instead find ourselves grabbing a magazine from the rack, flipping through its pages, desperately looking for something that might make us “enough”— fortified fruit science, perhaps?

Well, last week, TIME Magazine skipped past all the subtleties and came right out with it. Next to the now infamous picture of a thin, provocatively posed, bombshell of a mother, defiantly breastfeeding her nearly four-year-old son, were printed the words:

Are you mom enough?

The cover sparked a flurry of responses as women around the world issued a collective, “WTF, TIME?”

There has to be a way to write a compelling cover story on attachment parenting without exploiting every woman’s deepest insecurities, pitting mothers against one another, and making this poor kid’s future college life a nightmare!

But the way I see it, TIME gave us a something of a gift. By stripping that cover of all pretense, it revealed in plain language the lie behind so much of the media’s messages for women: If you aren’t a sexy, put-together, powerful, super-mom, who breastfeeds her kids until they’re four while baking apple pies, making crayon art, and investing in a successful career, then you’re a failure. You will always fall short. You will never be enough.

Such an idea is so absurd, it should elicit laughter, not groans. It’s like millionized lashes and fortified fruit science—too stupid to take seriously!

And yet a small part of us believes it.

Why?

This whole idea of the “ideal woman” is one reason I decided to take on my year of biblical womanhood project.

I hated how well-intentioned pastors and leaders were taking the Bible I loved so much and turning into yet another magazine cover that asks: “Are you biblical enough?”

And by “biblical,” most pointed to a glamorized, westernized version of the Proverbs 31 Woman, who rises before dawn each day, provides food for her family, trades fine linens for a profit, invests in real estate, and works late into the night weaving and sewing. Christian books and conferences tend to perpetuate the idea that a woman’s worth should be measured by the details, rather than the message, of Proverbs 31, and like the magazines in the checkout line, often focus on fitness, domesticity, beauty, and success as ways of earning the favor of God and men.

But here’s the thing.

The poetic figure found in Proverbs 31 is not the only woman in the Bible to receive the high praise of,eshet chayil!” or “woman of valor!

So did Ruth.

And Ruth could not be more opposite than the Proverbs 31 Woman.

Ruth was a Moabite (a big no-no back then; men were forbidden from marrying foreign wives).

Ruth was childless.

Ruth, was a widow— “damaged goods” in those days.

Ruth was dirt poor.

Rather than exchanging fine linens with the merchants to bring home a profit to her husband and children, Ruth spent her days gleaning leftovers from the workers in the fields so she and her mother-in-law could simply survive!

And yet, despite looking nothing like the ancient near Eastern version of a magazine cover, Ruth is bestowed with the highest honor. She is called a woman of valor. Eshet chayil!

She is called a woman of valor before she marries Boaz, before she has a child with him for Naomi, before she becomes a wealthy and influential woman.

Because in God’s eyes, she was already enough.

The brave women of Scripture—from Ruth to Deborah to Mary Magdalene to Mary of Bethany—remind me that there’s no one right way to be a woman, and that these images of perfection with which we are confronted every day are laughable to those of us who are in on the big secret: We are already enough.

We are enough because God is enough, and God can turn even the smallest acts of valor—letting go of a grudge, cleaning puke out of a kid’s hair, inviting the homeless guy to dinner, listening to someone else’s story— into something great.

Proverbs 31:25 says the wise woman “laughs at the days to come.”

I don’t think the Proverbs 31 Woman laughs because she has it all together.

I think she laughs because she knows the secret about being enough.

And so my big act of valor this week will be simple: I’m going to pick up the first magazine I see in the grocery store, point to the cover, and laugh like a maniac, right in front of God and everybody.

....Let’s just hope it’s not something sophisticated like The Atlantic, cause then I would look like an idiot.





Friday, May 18, 2012

Nneka - Do you love me now


Nneka - Do you love me now
(live session @ streets of Paris)






Lyrics

I heard my name, did you call me ?
Did you speak truth, when you dug wounds,
When you spilled blood, did you say love ?,
When you promised the most high,
You will not betray

Do you love me now (x4)

Yes, it's heavy on my heart to communicate,
Absentminded on the earth devoted to sin,
Not knowing i'm dead,
Your phrases are highly majestic,
I am amazed by your great linguistics,
Yet your words are placed together,
To sell dubious manifestoes,
The end is devastating, barrage of lies,
Your words are sweet enticing but false grandeur,
Still I go, I go to the foutain where waters flow,
Where the truth uprises there I will grow now

Do you love me (x4)
I will grow

I know I have never been found,
It is dark for we are all blind,
In solitude we know God
In public we do not act God,
Is it destiny is it mean to be,

Do you love me now,
Now that everything has been said and done,
Do you love me, now that I function in your madness,
Do you love me now, for your love is so cold,
Oh sodom and gomorrah caution !!
Do you love me, now that I am no longer me

(Merci à Kiki pour cettes paroles)





Wikipedia

Nneka Lucia Egbuna (born 24 December 1980) is a Nigerian-German hip hop/soul singer and songwriter. She sings in both Igbo and English.

Biography

Nneka is the daughter of an Anambra state Nigerian father, and German mother[1]. She was born and raised in Warri, in the Delta region of Nigeria, and went to the primary school of the Delta Steel Company, then the secondary school at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Nneka relished the experience of singing from an early age in her school and in the church choir. After relocating to Hamburg, Germany, at the age of 18, she pursued a career in singing alongside a degree in Anthropology.[2] She now divides her time between Nigeria and Hamburg.[3]

Music career

Since 2003 Nneka has been working closely with the hip hop beatmaker DJ Farhot, a producer living in Hamburg. As a young singer she first gained public attention in 2004 while performing as an opening act for dancehall reggae star Sean Paul at Hamburg Stadtpark. After much acclaim, Nneka was given a green light to record her first album.

After releasing her debut EP 'The Uncomfortable Truth' with the music label Yo Mama's Recording Company, she performed on her first tour with Patrice Bart-Williams in April 2005, playing shows in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

She finished recording her first album in the autumn of 2005. Entitled 'Victim of Truth', it was released not only in Germany but also in England, France, Netherlands, Nigeria and Japan. Garnering rave reviews from the media, the UK's Sunday Times later declared it “the year’s most criminally overlooked album”, comparing it favourably to 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill'.[4]

Following the release of the album, Nneka enjoyed a sustained and successful period of touring, performing at festivals such as Chiemsee Reggae Summer, Haarlem (BevrijdingsPop), Den Haag (Park Pop) and Saint-Brieuc (Art Rock Festival) as well as in respected venues like La Maroquinerie and New Morning in Paris, Tivoli in Utrecht, Paradiso in Amsterdam and Cargo and ULU in London. She has also supported artists such as Femi Kuti, Bilal, Seeed, and Gnarls Barkley.

In February 2008 she released her second album, 'No Longer at Ease'. The title of the album is taken from a novel of the same name by Chinua Achebe and reflects the lyrical content of the record. Most of the songs are political, talking about the plight of the Niger Delta and the corruption in Nneka’s homeland. “No Longer at Ease” combines the political and the personal in “a winning mix of soul, hip-hop an reggae”.[5] The lead single from it, 'Heartbeat', became her first song to break into the German Top 50.[6] In September 2009, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number twenty.[7]

The following months saw tours in France, Italy and Portugal, while she also supported Lenny Kravitz on his French tour in April 2009.

Nneka has been nominated in three categories for the 2009 Channel O Music Video Awards,[8] and won an award for Best African Act at the 2009 MOBO Awards.
In late 2009, she was chosen as of one Beyond Race Magazine's "50 Emerging Artists," resulting in a spot in the publication's #11 issue (with Bodega Girls and J. Cole on the cover), as well as an exclusive Q&A for the magazine's site.[9]

In November 2009, Nneka staged her first concert tour of the United States where she performed shows in New York City, Vienna (Washington DC), Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Furthermore she was a special guest on The Roots Jam session. Her first US release Concrete Jungle was set for 2 February 2010.

Her track 'Kangpe' is also featured as a soundtrack on the EA Sports FIFA 2010 video game.
In January 2010, Nneka appeared in Late Show with David Letterman in New York before getting her US tour underway.

In June 2010, she won the reggae category of the Museke Online Africa Music Award 2010 with her hit song, Africans.

She agreed to go on tour with Nas and Damian Marley to help them promote their 'distant relatives' album. She has done a remix of her highly rated track, 'heartbeat' with Nas which is expected to be made public soon.

She has also agreed to participate in this year's Lilith Fair Concert (2010) where the likes of Tegan & Sara, Sarah McLachlan, Kelly Clarkson, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Corinne Bailey Rae, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna and others will be performing. She will be performing in Washington, Raleigh and Charlotte (United States). She recorded a song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa called "Viva Africa". It is a tribute to the premier mundial on African soil.

She won the award for best indigenous artist in Nigeria at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards 2010 which was held in New York, U.S.A.

Musical style

Even though Nneka sings more than raps, she names hip hop as her primary musical root and most important source of inspiration, while citing artists such as Fela Kuti and Bob Marley as well as contemporary rappers Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Lauryn Hill as key influences in her own pursuit of musical recognition.[2]

Her lyrics reflect much of her history and life in Nigeria as well as her time spent in Western Europe. Her songs stress the issues of capitalism, poverty and war and are often loaded with moral and biblical messages and references, with some music commentators comparing her to Erykah Badu, Neneh Cherry[10] and Floetry.[11]

Discography

Albums

Singles

  • 2005: The Uncomfortable Truth
  • 2006: Beautiful
  • 2006: God of Mercy
  • 2007: Africans
  • 2008: Heartbeat #9 Portugal, #20 UK, #34 Austria, #49 Germany[14]
  • 2008: Walking
  • 2009: Kangpe

Compilations

EPs

  • 2005: The Uncomfortable Truth

Soundtracks


The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 2/2

We move from what I considered a favorable analysis of 20th Century Modernism's rationalism to a deeply flawed discussion about Postmodernism and Process Theology. Poe and Davis come up short here and this is an instance where "science meets philosophy/theology and each are as large and demanding as the other..." which, to me means, that a good scientist cannot be expected to be a good philosopher/theologian, try as they might (though I applaud any-and-all efforts attempted). Nor do we usually find that "good philosophers/theologians make for good scientists" generally (although John Polkinghorne may be the exception here). And it seems that this book is an instance of these general observations of a theologian and a scientist trying to make sense of science and the bible (God in the Gaps) and a little known theological perspective about God and ourselves called process theology.

Whereas in part 1 after having made a good start with their discussion of Rationalism and the Church, we move into part 2 that is less than steller to find a poor grasp of two subjects. The first is the typical evangelic short-sale of process theology and then the confused-sale of the God-in-the-gaps theology attempting to bridge science with faith by making it a quasi-science. Causing me to make notations within the body of the article below of my observations and disagreements - which are many - in a review that was especially long and not fun to write because of its many erroneous statements and errors.

However, the value of this discussion does show that:

(i) conservative evangelicalism may be now admitting to their dependency and causal relationship upon Modernism. However, until evangelicalism's correspondent placeholds are lifted from their over-abundant dogmatic assertions and systematic doctrines there can be no moving forward for this faith group as a whole. (One that I think Emergent Christianity better validates through its postmodernistic approach to science, philosophy, and theology).

(ii) It also tells of evangelicalism's gross misunderstanding of process theology, which I found revealing and have thusly included my remarks within the body of the text as shown below. I did not expect less but I would've been encouraged to have found a better analysis of process theology than what is laid out here by two "experts" in their fields of theology (Poe) and chemistry (Davis).

(iii) The last value I found is that even in evangelical Christianity we now may find admission that God is as actively "entangled and enmeshed in our world" as we are in "His creation and divine personage." Not that evangelicalism has not been saying this all along. But because they are now trying to speak it from a postmodernistic, process-like version using open theology and an admixture of Emergent Theology as their new, formative voice. And from that attitude can we then find a more generous evangelical admission towards scientific studies and assertions (perhaps even towards brethren that hold a more open view towards an evolutionary understanding of creation).  Along with the absorption of some kind of process-like theology in the future (but more probably in the direction of a revisement of classical and open theology). Time will tell. Or is it, the timing will be telling?

But in whatever case, the point has been made that our modernistic western civilization has been the death knell to poetry and to the storied narrative. One that can be recoverable within postmodernism as it continues to proceed forth in participatory and authenticating ways. Ways that will bear with postmodernism its own forms and versions of obstacles no less than Modernism has experienced. We expect this but can also embrace its turmoil within the ever-expanding worlds of multi-ethnic globalism, the rich and variegated experiences of pluralism and societal individualities, and the technological solidifications portending to our many diversified societies.

Only some form of postmodernism seems most able to allow this diverse symposium of culture, heritage, religion, and humanism. But we are nonetheless assured that above all, in all, and through all God will be there enlightening mankind to His ever steady presence, plans and ministries through the Church of Jesus Christ (aka Stanley Hauerwas!) by the power of His Holy Spirit working above us, within us, and through us to the glory of God's salvation remaking all things new. Amen and amen.

R.E. Slater (res)
May 17, 2012

ps - the usage of the phrase God in the Gaps is new to me. So we will together read of it together and see what it is about. However, we should likewise defer opinion b/c it may be as well mis-analyzed here as process theology was mis-analyzed. Consequently I can only react in proportionate response and conjecture and must save theological credulity for a later discussion should this same sophistry arise and give us more cause for a better informed response to its quasi-theological perspective.



Continued from Part 1 -

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 1/2



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Beyond the God of the Gaps
http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/beyond-the-god-of-the-gaps/#more-1808

by rjs5
posted on

Part One of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History asks questions about the way humans have conceived of God and the way this impacts ideas about God’s action in the world. The last two chapters in Part One Poe and Davis consider process theology and God of the Gaps thinking. These chapters delve more deeply into the question that frames this portion of the book – what kind of God interacts with the world – and how does he interact.

Process theology and intelligent design are two [very] different ways of wrestling with the idea of God in the context of the materialism and naturalism that has captured Western thinking. These assumptions of materialism and naturalism are, it seems to me, in the air we breath and the water we drink. They are simply the unreflective, unexamined starting point for much of Western intellectual engagement, both in the academy and in the broader culture. Poe and Davis explore the positives and negatives of process theology and then move on to God-of-the-gaps arguments and finally to the way to get beyond these philosophical arguments to a more robust theological view.

Process theology

Allows natural theology to take a cue from evolutionary theory with all of being, including creation and the nature of God, evolving in time. There are rather unChristian, deistic, [my edits here, if any thing process is more panentheistic - res], philosophical forms of process theology that invoke, perhaps, a spiritual nature to life, but have no room for a personal God of the sort revealed in scripture, or for a God who acts in his creation [perhaps I've missed something in process theology but it seems that process is all about a personal God revealed in scripture and as an active actor in creation - res]. This is interesting, but need not really concern us in the search for ways to think as Christians about the interaction between God and his creation.

Is process theology a valid option to think about the role of God in the world? [yes - res]

[see relevancy22's sidebars under "theism" - res]

There are also some forms of process theology that are more clearly Christian. Here Poe and Davis outline the thinking of William Temple and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. These two have put some ideas forward that are worth pursuing. Poe and Davis acknowledge this, but seem to view the strength of process theology as lying in the way it underscores the inadequacy of a purely material outlook rather than its positive suggestions, although their comments about the inadequacy of natural selection leave me scratching my head. I expect the questions on natural selection will come up again in Part Two of the book. Poe and Davis sum up this discussion emphasizing the impact of process theology on one’s view of the interaction of God with the world:
Process theology makes the same error as the reductionist monarchical model makes when it assumes that God must always act in only one way. Rather than think God must always do the same thing, we may think of God relating differently but appropriately to every level of organization of the universe. He may operate in a deterministic way at some points and in an indeterminate way at other points. Like Calvinism and Arminianism, process theology would have God always do it the same way, which leaves God less free than the people who think about God. (p. 120) 
Poe and Davis quixotically argue the issue of freedom in the doctrine of Arminianism that is nothing but about the freedom of God, man and nature. And then they throw in process theology to boot. Consequently I find their arguments specious. The only value that can be allowed here is that they actually may be referring to the nature of these viewpoints as a closed-system. But there again process theology was formed to open-up church doctrines that appear closed. So again I find this summary statement invalid. - res
Some claim God must know and determine everything, his omniscience and sovereignty demand this[sic, the view of  Calvinism - res]; in contrast many process theologians claim that God must leave everything free, action by God would deny the universe the freedom to become [another gross misrepresentation of process theology; ultimately God's sovreignty does grant this kind of freedom, and does not remove it by determinism and reductionisti,c or mechanistic, process as classical theology would teach - res], and becoming is the core of process theology [amen. this is a true statement. - res]. Poe and Davis suggest that both these extremes are lacking.

[Consequently I find Poe and Davis' knowledge of process theology uninspiring. We have here at relevancy22 been working through a synthesis between process theology, on the one hand, and conservative theism, on the other hand, something that I've been calling relational theism. For more on this subject please refer to "theism" under the sidebars here. - res]

God-of-the-gaps Provides

Another approach to natural theology. In this case a metaphysical framework is at play that views events as either of God or simply natural.
The God-of-the-gaps phenomenon arises as people try to fix the place in nature where God may be found to act. This understanding of divine activity is consistent with every other kind of real event in a closed material world. If the activity of God cannot be shown to be of the same kind as other events in the material world, than it cannot be understood as real. Of course, if the activity of God can be described within nature, then it must be a natural event rather than divine action! (p, 131-132)
But the view that puts divine causality on the same plane as physical causality is necessarily limited. It leads to a limited view of God and of his action, or room for action, in the cosmos. One example Poe and Davis use to illustrate there point is the incarnation.
At the heart of the Christian faith lies the ultimate expression of this conflict: the incarnation. Was Jesus fully man or fully God? We ask God to show himself in ways we can perceive, but when he does, we say he is just a man. The central event of Christian faith demands that Christians employ a metaphysic that allows for multiple levels of experience. Any activity of God in the world that can be observed can necessarily be described according to the categories of nature. Does this make divine activity and natural laws mutually exclusive? (p. 132)

I would refer the reader to consider the hypostatic union of Christ as discussed in the Athenasian Creed found here at this link discussing the creeds of the church (about midway down) - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/short-history-of-church-creeds-and.html. It can be seen that because various forms of pelagianism and gnosticism had occurred in the early church we were then able to get to a more complete understanding of Jesus' divinity and humanity as a result of those egregious errors. It is an important doctrine to understand as it is trotted out again for review in the breeches and bellows of science. This same can also be said of Jesus' virgin birth found here at this link - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/search/label/Virgin%20Birth. But one I found less than satisfying when reviewing John Polkinghorne's scientific understanding of it (as discussed in that article), though he is a favorite of mine. - res
Intelligent design – looking for empirical evidence for divine causality separate from physical causality – is a search for a God-of-the-gaps. This doesn’t mean that the world is not designed, all Christians believe that God designed the world intelligently and for a purpose, but that divine causality and physical causality can and do coexists in the same phenomena.

I think what is here trying to be said is what we've described in a Biologos article of God's involvement in evolution - even until now, and even into the futures of mankind and the Earth. More probably b/c Calvinism's Sovereignty of God worldview has such a strong hold on evangelicalism has this kind of thinking arisen to further explain an austere God's presence in humanity's and Earth's subsequent "evolvement...." - res

I will list below at the end of this article five (5) links to articles that I think better bridges the "gap" in the God-in-the-gap kind of thinking. They come from an evolutionary perspective but they better describe the closeness of God's Sovereignty from the perspective of scientific discoveries. And thus make for a better integration between theological observations about God involvement with man and the Earth than I can find here in this type of thinking.... - res

Beyond the God-of-the-Gaps

Poe and Davis proceed here to muse a bit about topics like methodological naturalism (for which they have some negative comments); naturalism of the gaps (by which they mean the imposition of philosophical naturalism beyond the limits where science can speak); and the ability of humans to manipulate nature (heat or cool our houses, build dams, harness electricity, fly to Australia, and so forth). Some of the discussion gets a little off track (for example I would say that we have not learned to overcome the laws of nature, and we certainly don’t violate the laws of nature, but we can and do utilize the laws of nature to achieve a desired goal). By and large, however, the point is a good one. The human mind can conceive of ways to manipulate nature. Certainly the mind of God can do the same and more.
The more intelligent we become, the more we realize just how open the universe really is. As Polkinghorne has observed, “science’s description of physical process is not drawn so tight as to condemn God to the non-interactive role of deistic spectator.” God is at least as free and able as humans to interact with the universe. (p. 137)
A Trinitarian God

Poe and Davis consider the nature of God as a relational being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be significant for a proper understanding of the God who acts in his creation. Taking any one of these alone as a model for the interaction of God with the cosmos will be limited and flawed.
Theological systems from classical theology to Calvinism to process theology have in common the tendency to conceive of God as acting in the same way at all times, a view unsustainable from Scripture but perfectly consistent with a philosophical approach to faith. Polkinghorne has argued that “God’s utter perfection lies in the total appropriateness at all times of the Creator’s relationship with creation, whether that creation is a quark soup or the home of humanity.” (p. 137)
The Trinity allows for this appropriate interaction at all times. God can be in time, transcend time, localized in space, and everywhere at once. The Father is, they suggest, “constantly aware yet forever removed from the world of space and time.” Transcendent, eternal, perfection, absolute holiness are attributes of the Father. The Father interacts with his creation through the Holy Spirit and through his messengers (angels). The Holy Spirit is the most significant here as it proceeds from the Father as part of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit extends into time and space and exercises the power of God in time and space. The Holy Spirit is extended, wave-like. The Son on the other hand is particular. The Son entered into space-time in the incarnation.
In God’s incarnation, however, God comes to grips with a fundamental problem posed by a universe in which people can have freedom: theodicy, or the problem of suffering. A trinitarian God experiences this problem from the inside and not merely from the vantage point of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. As Father, Son, and Spirit, the trinitarian God becomes part of his own physical creation as the Son while never ceasing to be distinct from it as the Father. God experiences the pain and suffering through participation in the cosmos. (p. 141) [Again, this is better said, or un-said, through reference to this link here on the church's creeds and confessions within the lower body of that article - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/05/short-history-of-church-creeds-and.html. - res]
The Holy Spirit interacts with the universe, the material creation from quark to black hole and everything between in its openness and process. The Son interacts personally with humans created in the image of God by becoming one of us. The Father transcends space and time. [Affectively, the Trinity as a whole does all this together or, interacts with all of this together. It is not necessary to artificially divide the Trinity into these type of qualifiers. Please refer to the sidebar under Trinity for further discussion of this subject. - res]

The chapter finishes with a brief reflection on the world to come – the eschaton [please refer to the sidebar under Trinity again as well as under Kingdom Eschaetology. - res]. This will be something new and different with the disappearance of the apparent contradictions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a new physics allowing for resurrection, new heavens, new earth, in continuity with the resurrection of the Son of God.

Does this trinitarian view of God’s action in the world make sense to you?

Do you agree that theological systems limit the role of God, and thus inevitably miss part of the picture?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If you have comments please visit Beyond the God of the Gaps at Jesus Creed

 
 
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BELOW WILL BE FOUND BETTER WRITTEN ARTICLES TO HELP
THE SEARCHING CHRISTIAN BETTER UNDERSTAND THE ROLE BETWEEN
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE KNOWN AS EVOLUTIONARY CREATIONISM.
 
 
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God's Role in Creation

Image for: What role could God have in evolution?


Is God Just Playing Dice?

Evolution: Is God Just Playing Dice?
How Could God Create Through Evolution?


How Could God Create Through Evolution?: A Look at Theodicy, Part 1

What Is Evolution?


Misconceptions about Evolutionary Theory and Process




For Even More Information

Go to the "Science" sidebars -->

And to http://biologos.org/



 
Select Comments
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/17/beyond-the-god-of-the-gaps-rjs/#comment-333297

No.3 - JJ says:

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 1/2

Many of the ideas and comments contained in the following article are not new to this website. We have discussed each one at length and have so notated those discussions per the sidebar index to the right side of this site. This would include Deism, Darwinism, Augustine-Aristotle-Reformation, Creedal Development and Church History, the Literature of the Bible, and even Process Theology.

However, being a poet who likes to write with a prose style, I did find the last section contained in this article quite interesting... that poetry has died due to no small influence by that of 20th Century Western Modernism. It's an observation that I myself have felt these many years will listening to formulaic assertions about God, my faith, the church, our human societies, and just about anything else that our Western rationalism has affected and maintained to the death of our present modernistic culture.

In fact, through postmodernism's enhanced philosophic paradigms has come a (post)structural framework that can remove modernism's philosophical gaps and restore more of an integrative approach and balance (or symmetry) to all human and scientific disciplines. Some few of those approaches have also been discussed at length including:

  • the gradual detachment of Christianity from Calvinism's more systematic forms of theology (as well as other forms of systematizing Church dogmas and creedal assertions);
  •  
  • the assimilation of language and culture back into our reading of Paul (described as NPP, the New Perspective of Paul approach via Sanders, Dunn and Wright);
  •  
  • the re-connection of science to faith, and faith to science;
  •  
  • the heightened awareness of our human journey and its importance to the reading of the Bible giving back to it an authority and authenticity (contra the doctrines of inerrancy's rationalisms on the one hand and blatant Christian mysticism on the other);
  •  
  • the re-absorption of human anthropologies, sociologies, linguistics into the text of Scripture;
  •  
  • the re-awakening of our ecological responsibility to the care of both the Earth and humanity through ecologically sound practices;
  •  
  • and finally, the renewal of justice and compassion as a general human endeavor as based upon the practices of Jesus' ministry to the poor, the oppressed, and the neglected.

Through postmodernism's promise we are being led towards a participatory and authenticating form of faith and worship to our Creator-God-Redeemer which thusly provides hope for humanity's dreams by enabling and empowering increasingly connected civilizations towards peace, good will among all men, many forms of consensus leadership, and a formative sense of responsible world citizenship.

R.E. Slater
May 16, 2012


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The Death of Poetry?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/15/the-death-of-poetry-rjs/

by RJS
May 15, 2012
Comments

I was recently sent a copy of the new book by Harry Lee Poe and Jimmy H. Davis God and the Cosmos: Divine Activity in Space, Time and History. Harry Lee Poe (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University in Jackson TN, Jimmy H. Davis (Ph.D. University of Illinois) is University Professor of Chemistry at Union University.

In God and the Cosmos Poe and Davis explore the interaction of God with his creation. There are two parts to their approach. Part One explores ideas about the kind of God who interacts with the world and the ways humans have considered this across cultures, religions, and time. Part Two turns this around and asks about the kind of world that allows God to interact.

Part One: What kind of God interacts with the world?

This section of the book does not address this question directly – but rather asks questions about the way humans have conceived of God and the way this impacts ideas concerning God’s action in the world. Poe and Davis begin with a survey of the way that God or divinity is understood in major world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam. This is an interesting survey – although the discussion of Judaism makes such a break with Christianity that it left me scratching my head at times.

How do we think about God?

How does this affect the way we think about God’s interaction with the world?

Turning primarily to the West and the development of science in Europe, Poe and Davis put forth a few ideas that drive much of the discussion in the rest of this section. The notion of a God who is rational combined with a break from the Platonic philosophical underpinning derived from Augustine gave rise to the reformation and the scientific revolution. Poe and Davis see the key developments and conflicts as more philosophical than theological.

Thomas Aquinas set the stage by breaking with Augustine and his reliance on Plato, turning instead to Aristotle. This allowed a view of nature more conducive to the development of science. But even Aristotle had to fall. Philosophical underpinnings that found the ground of knowledge in rational thought without [scientific] experimentation, not “the God Hypothesis,” had to fall before the scientific revolution could flower. The conflict over Galileo was not theological but philosophical – a rejection of Aristotle.

Question Authority

Poe and Davis also suggest that the reformation, including the cultural changes that preceded the reformation, led to the scientific revolution.
In the Reformation the principle issue at stake was one of authority.… The University was a monastic community. All disciplines were subdisciplines of theology. Theology was the “queen of the sciences” and philosophy was her handmaiden. The Protestant reformation was not only a debate about authority in matters of religion but also authority in politics and all areas of scholarship, including what we now call science.

Scripture and tradition. The change of mind that we call the Reformation began to take place at least 150 years before Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses, and it would continue to unfold 150 years afterwards.… this way of conceiving authority had begun at least by the time of John Wycliffe (d. 1384) , long before the observations of Copernicus (d. 1543). (p. 60)
The revolution in the view of authority enabled the scientific revolution, which required something of an open view toward tradition and traditional authorities. This also led to a view of scripture as the authoritative foundation for faith [and not the state - res].

Either-Or

According to Poe and Davis, with the publication of A Golden Chain (1590) William Perkins (1558-1602) set into motion a process that led to an either-or dichotomy describing God’s work in the world. A Golden chain is a text that popularized the theology of Calvin with a famous diagram that outlined the causes of salvation and damnation.
The idea of conceiving theology as a massive dichotomy represents a major innovation by Perkins to the earlier theology of Calvin.

Like Plato’s hierarchy or Aristotle’s chain of being, Perkins’s Golden Chain provides his audience with a way to conceive of God’s causal involvement in the world. God is the King who issues decrees, and from these decrees there issues forth an unbroken chain of cause and effect. (p. 79)
The problem with Perkins and the theology that followed Perkins is that it keeps the Holy Spirit safely in heaven or eternity. There is no real role for God or the Spirit in the day to day processes in the world. This either-or mode of thinking became the dominant assumption as men thought about the nature of God’s role in the world.
By the end of the eighteenth century, William Perkins’s model of reducing things to two alternatives [dualism] had become the dominant way of thinking in the English-speaking world.… 
In the natural world observed by scientific investigation, scientists were faced by the two alternatives that their worldview allowed them: (1) phenomena occurred by the direct action of God, or (2) phenomena occurred as the result of the laws of nature. 
The idea that God could be active within nature was not an alternative allowed to them by their prevailing worldview. (pp. 87-88)
Poe and Davis trace this development through Newton, Boyle, Laplace and other early scientist to Darwin. In the thinking of Darwin, and in the way evolution has been thought of since Darwin, we see a full flowering of the idea. If there is a natural explanation then God was not at work. He is relegated to some deistic first cause or eliminated from the picture entirely.

The Death of Poetry

Poe and Davis see the loss of poetry as another major piece of the puzzle in understanding the modern conflict between science and the action of God. In fact they put it rather bluntly: Modern Western culture is unique in world history for having lost its poetry. All cultures, except modern Western culture, appreciate poetry. (p. 96) This they see as a unique development of the 20th century … and it is not only poetry, but the arts as well that we have lost: painting, sculpture, opera, ballet, classical music. These no longer belong to the broad western culture. The loss of poetry goes hand-in-hand with a literalism that permeates our reading of scripture and our understanding of God. And this devastates the ability to understand God.

Humans have no frame of reference for understanding God because the language of the bible uses analogy, comparison, and poetry. Only by using creative license in the form of poetic language can we even begin to describe God and his action in the world.
Without a sense of poetry and the way analogies work, people lose the ability to use models, whether in theology or in science. The model, whether scientific or theological, is not the reality. A theological system is never more than a human constructed model of God. It may be useful for understanding an aspect of God that it affirms, but it is always woefully inadequate as a total understanding of God. (p. 100)
The last two chapters in Part One consider with process theology and God-of-the-Gaps-thinking. These chapters delve more deeply into the question that frames this portion of the book – what kind of God interacts with the world – and how does he interact. I’ll turn to these two in the next post on this book – but today I would like to stop here and consider the scenario that Poe and Davis have outlined.

Do you think that Poe and Davis are right in the time-line they’ve sketched?

Does the either-or dichotomy represents the common view of the action of God in the world?

And perhaps most important of all:

Have we lost the ability to appreciate poetry and thus to think constructively about God?


If you wish to contact me directly, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.
If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.




Part 2 continues here -

The Death of Poetry by 20th Century Modernism, Part 2/2





Surviving College, Part 1: The "Game Plan" for Christians Desiring Practical Wisdom


 

Bonhoeffer Wasn’t the Answer

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/16/bonhoeffer-wasnt-the-answer/

If you had one Christian classic to give to a friend who was a newer believer, what would it be and why? You can even answer with Bonhoeffer.
Now there’s no question that the book is a classic. Bonhoeffer should be read, and has plenty to offer in many situations. And given Scot McKnight's deep love for - and physical resemblance to - the great German theologian, I’m on thin ice even bringing this up. The issue is that Bonhoeffer didn’t live long enough to comment on the challenges of living a faithful Christian life on the college campuses of the 21st century.

This is why Nic and I wrote this book: to provide practical wisdom for the unique challenges and opportunities that students face on today’s college campuses. It was born out of a desire to share with our graduating high school seniors all the stuff we felt like they needed to know, that we couldn’t possibly tell them in one conversation.

Our chapters are on topics ranging from surviving a secular school, a Christian school, looking at the dating scene, dealing with temptation, integrating your faith and your major, and a whole lot more. Plus one of my favorite parts of the book is a “My Story” section after every other chapter: seven first-person testimonies from recent college grads about their own experiences, that serve to reinforce the messages we’re sharing.

Over the next few posts, I’ll invite you to think back to your college days for your perspective, and those of you currently in college or high school—we’d love to get your perspective, from those who are experiencing it right now.


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... to be continued in the weeks ahead ...


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