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

Friday, January 11, 2013

Of Sons and Daughters Lost to the Fathers and Mothers of this World


Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1662–1669 | Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

The Parable of the Prodigal Sons

Commentaries by Pete Enns & R.E. Slater
A Parable of the $20 Bill
Sermon by James Grier

“But While He was Still Far Off” (or, what if God actually loves us?)

by Pete Enns
January 6, 2013

The father, obviously, represents God in this parable, but this isn’t a “get saved and go to heaven after you die” story. The son is, well, a son–already part of the family.

In Jesus’ day, he was addressing his stubborn fellow Jewish countrymen, reminding them about the love of God and that it’s never too late to come home. When this and other stories were adapted for the Christian faith, that same point remained but with a broader [non-Jewish] audience.

The story isn’t about conversion to Christianity. It’s about God being on the look out for those in the family who have wandered off, and God simply can’t wait to welcome them home.

I read stories like this and I wonder, What if this is actually true? What if there is a God who is really like this? What if God can’t wait to have us around–even with the garbage we keep carrying around and our half hearted “I’m sorries?”

What if God is glad to see us?

And the much more threatening question, What difference would really believing all that make in how I look at, well, pretty much everything?

And, what would it look like if I loved the way God loved?

- Pete Enns


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


How Does One become "Family"?

R.E. Slater
January 11, 2012

I'd like to make one small addition and add the following observation....

The traditional church view here is that "the family" refers to believers of God who follow after Jesus. To a Spirit-baptized, confessing believer, who has left God and now wishes to come back, to whom God says to His child, "Eh, verily, even now, do I love thee! Thou art my child and ever will I love thee." Of course this doesn't answer the question of "faith and works" (James, Peter, etc) so much as state a profundity of church dogma which we must save for another day's examination.

But this isn't what Jesus was saying....

Certainly Jesus had this in mind when speaking to the Pharisees about belonging to God through the covenants made in Abraham, Moses and David. As Jews under covenant (esp. the unconditional covenant of Abraham) they were part of God's people. Even if, after having broken covenant with God (sic, the Mosaic Law, and Suzerainty-Lordship of God in the Abrahamic Covenant) they were welcomed back. It's what God does as One who Loves and Redeems.

But how can one come back when covenant has been broken?

In the OT sense of "remnant (theology)" those Jews who broke covenant were no longer part of God's blessings and fidelity. They stood in jeopardy of judgment and would be treated as a non-covenanted people God knew not. This is the sense you get when reading the prophets of the OT as they preached against the sins of the people of Israel who hardened their hearts against God and persisted in refusing to repent to the prophets message that they had broken covenant with God. That they were faithless, refusing His will and word in their lives. So too had the younger son in the parable acted by rejecting his father, collecting his inheritance, and leaving the community of his birthright.

Under the Abrahamic Covenant there was a way back to God. But how?

In essence, God Himself would become the sacrifice for His people's sin, as the Lamb of God, pictured in Jesus (who was very God himself!). Hence, when God had Abraham bring a sacrifice for his, and his family's (and his future descendant's) ratification of the covenant (... a ratification that in essence was an atoning covenant for sin, a family covenant for membership, and a submittal covenant for duration of treaty, among other things... ). When this sacrifice was brought it was God Himself who cleaved the oxen in two, who functioned as both the priest and the mediating sacrifice, before Himself and Abraham (Abraham here is pictured as yet another typological figure like that of Adam for mankind).

Thus was God both the Suzerainty who treated with Abraham, and the undergirding foundation for the covenant itself, when it surely would be broken by Abraham in his doubts and faithless acts soon to come.

Even so did Jesus remind the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day of their faithlessness to God. Of their need to repent (sic, as such, Jesus was acting as God's prophet to His people Israel... ). Of their rightness of restoration based upon God's faithfulness and love as their Suzerainty who had become their surety as sacrifice upon creation of their treaty with YHWH. Which Jesus Himself would someday soon perform in His own body and spirit as Exemplar Magnifique, by way of re-establishing Israel's broken covenant with God through Himself, as God's perfect, and acceptable sacrifice.


To whom does this apply? To Israel alone?

Hence, under Paul and NT theology, God's covenant has been expanded to all men - both Jews and Gentiles alike - in and through Jesus. Jesus is mankind's surety of covenant in/under/before/beside/by God. Through Jesus is our sin removed. Through Jesus may we become adopted into God's covenant as His people. And through Jesus has Israel's covenant with God has become enlarged to all men everywhere. And if - and when - broken, as it surely will be, it will ever remain in force because it is based upon the eternal God Himself, and through His Son, and not upon our own selves. So that even in our sin, we are God's "family". By right of creation (Genesis). By right of concession (Abraham). By right of redemption (Jesus).  By right of sustenance (the Holy Spirit). We are God's lost and straying remnant. We are God's faithless people to whom He seeks day and night.

And it is to this idea that God says to us today - to those standing outside His covenant, as well as to those standing inside His covenant - that all may come. And when we fail that He will be our surety. Our sacrifice. Our Oxen and Lamb. Our High Priest and Mediator. Our Savior and Redeemer. That His covenantal love restores, as well as makes, covenant with us. That He understands our brokenness and fallibility. Our sins, selfishness, pride, ego, faults, and small-mindedness. Our hesitancies, doubts, misgivings, hurts, shames, and failures. And yet, reaches out to all who wish to enter in to His grace and mercy, peace and forgiveness, healing and strength.

Then what is our answer this day? Shall we continue to despise the Father or return home?

Regardless if you have left "the covenanted family" or not. Regardless if you were not part of that family (like Abram first was before God had ever established covenant with him). It is to you that God has made covenant. A covenant that will stand the test of time through God Himself and through His work on Calvary's cross for all Jews and non-Jews alike. He is our Redeemer. Our surety. Our Promise-Keeper. Our faithful Lord and Sovereign who seeks all who are lost, and weary, and filled with the pain of this world.

Where money and riches and fast friends never brought satisfaction. Where the pigstys and self-imposed poverties of this world would grind upon our souls in our lostness and inability to find safe haven and rest. Yet God is there. He waits for you to leave yourself behind and to come to Him. Willingly. In hope and desire. Bearing ruin and destruction in your bones through the mangle of sin in our lives. Even as He searches for you. And is pained by your absence. And when seeing you come, will run to you. Embrace you. Hold you. And never let you go. Inviting all who will come to a feast held in your honor, reveling with God's broken heart of joy that yet another sinner has come home from the pigstys of the human heart and lost dens of this world. Wherever they be. For all are sought, and longed for by God, our Creator-Redeemer, with a broken and heavy heart, until "found" on the road leading back to "home". Come. And wait no longer.

R.E. Slater

Popular False Claims About Biblical Scholarship & Historical Criticism

3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship
On occasion I come across some sweeping public claims made by Evangelical leaders about the state of biblical scholarship. These claims may be genuinely felt, but they are still false, though they persist in the Evangelical subculture.
 
 
1. Historical Criticism is either dying or at least losing momentum in academia.
 
Rather than assuming that the Bible is revelatory (revealed by God, inspired) and therefore historically accurate, historical criticism seeks outside verification through various means of historical and textual analysis. Historical Criticism has its roots in Europe and has governed the academic study of the Bible for about 300 years.
 
I’m not saying anyone has to like it or agree with it. I’m only saying historical criticism isn’t dead or dying. Ask anyone who has taken Bible classes or earned a degree in Bible from a university.
 
True, many universities also engage in postmodern approaches that are critical of historical criticism (e.g., Feminist studies), but you’d still be hard pressed to find academic programs in Bible that don’t take as their axiomatic starting point a historical critical approach to the Bible. Look at course descriptions on the internet of departments of Religion, Judaism, Near Eastern Studies, Christian Origins, Hebrew Bible, etc. “The Historical-Critical Method” is what defines these programs.
 
Claiming that historical criticism is passé may suggest to some that conservative biblical scholarship has won the “battle” against historical criticism and is now finally vindicated. This may sound appealing in popular circles, but it is not true in academia.
 
 
2. Source Criticism of the Pentateuch is in a state of chaos.
 
Rather than accepting the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) in the middle of the second millennium BC [(~1400 BC) - res], source criticism claims that scribes living after the Babylonian exile (after 539 BC) created the Pentateuch out of various pre-existent “sources.”
 
Source criticism has been a major thorn in the side of conservative Christians since the 19th century. But again, like it or hate it, source criticism is not dead. What is dead is how the earliest source critics theorized about these sources, most notably Julius Wellhausen in the late 19th century. His theories have been criticized from almost the beginning, but a you’d have a hard time finding a research institution where the basic outlines of source criticism that Wellhausen popularized aren’t a given.
 
In my experience, the motivation behind this claim is apologetic. Casting doubt on the reigning theory of the Pentateuch supposedly elevates by default the traditional view. But this does not address the serious problems with the traditional view that gave rise to alternate explanations in the first place.
 
 
3. Biblical archaeology basically supports the historical veracity of the Bible.
 
Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites.
 
The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.
 
That doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to be done and people don’t need to keep an open mind. Who knows what the future will bring? But, my only point is this: at present to say that archaeology is a friend to the historical accuracy of the Bible may be true for some things, but not for the foundational story of Israel’s origins - slavery, exodus, and conquest. This has been and continues to be a big problem, and claiming otherwise just makes the matter worse.
 
Anyway, I know that across the Evangelical spectrum–especially with Evangelical biblical scholars–you will find various nuances and differences of opinion on these three issues, especially off the record. I’m only talking here about uninformed public claims made by Evangelical leaders. They may be rhetorically effective, but they are false and only lead to more cognitive dissonance.
 
 
 

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Index- Calvinism v. Arminianism






Index to Calvinism v. Arminianism


Newest Conversations




Calvinism v. Wesleyanism

Index to past articles on Calvinism v. Wesleyanism (Don Thorsen et al)



Arminianism Doctrine



God's Glory is God's Love and Nothing Less

Why High Calvinism is Impossible: The Importance of Language



Calvinism and Relational/Open Theology

Thomas Jay Oord - Pathways to Open and Relational Theologies

What We Mean and Don't Mean When We Talk About God's Sovereignty



Calvinism v. Arminianism

Calvinism (Still) Isn't Beautiful. It Sings for Divine Power not for Divine Weakness, Suffering, and Sacrifice

American Theologian Charles Hodge: How Arminianism and Calvinism Play Out in Conservative Chrisitanity

How is the God of 5-Point Calvinism Not Worthy of Worship?

The Insistence of God in Times of Change (or, 

The Emergence of Puritanism into Neo-Calvinism)

My Journey Out of Inerrancy to a Broader Hermeneutic

RNS - The Troubling Trends in America's 'Calvinist Revival'

A You A Divergent?

Parody: Hitler Finds Out Arminian Theology is True


Excerpt from Austin Fischer’s Book, "Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed"

John Fyre's Review of "The Young, Restless, and No Longer Reformed," Parts 1-2

Why Calvinism's "Divine Determinism" Doesn't Satisfy an Arminian Theologian

The FACTS of Arminian Theology: The Biblical Doctrines of Grace

Is there a middle ground between Calvinism and Arminianism?

Three Aspects of Arminianian Hope: "A Godly Kingdom That Is Becoming"

How Does God Move and Act in the Universe? - "Eight Positions of Divine Sovereignty"

Pushing up DAISY: Arminianism in Brief

Discussion in Arminianism's Grundmotif: God's Goodness and Man's Free Will vs. God's Sovereignty and Middle Knowledge

An Arminian Ordo Salutis (Order of Salvation)

Election is For Everyone - Discussion of Election, Free Will, Predestination, & God's Sovereignty

R. C. Sproul, Arminianism, and Semi-Pelagianism

Another Calvinist Misrepresentation of Arminianism

Can the 5-Point Calvinist Really Say, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know?"

Prevenient Grace and Why It Matters to Arminians and Calvinist Alike

Brian Abasciano’s response to a review of his book on Romans 9-11

Two Responses to the Book, "Against Calvinism" by Dr. Roger Olson

Blinded to the Real Issues

John Calvin and Jacob Arminius

What is Faith? Holding an Arminianism that is Not Wesleyan

Testimonial: "I Used to be a Calvinist"

Roger Olson: Arminianism as a God Centered Theology

IS Arminianism the Root of Christian Liberalism?

What does the Christian term Atonement Mean?

Of Calvin, Barth and Poetry

Evaluating "God Wins" by Mark Galli

Discussions on "Heresy, Universalism, Hell and Free Will"

Reforming the Reformed

God's Self-Limitations (Torrnace, Pinnock)

Arminianism is NOT Semi-Pelagianism

Calvinism and TULIP

DAISYs, TULIPs and Open Theism

Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 1

Fatal Flaws in Calvinism - Part 2

Is Emergent Another Name for Evangelical?

12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again




Frank Schaeffer (son of Francis) Speaks to the Destructiveness of Religious Legalism




Tuesday, January 8, 2013

A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Parts 2-3

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/remembering-the-progressive-orthodoxy-of-horace-bushnell-part-two/

by Roger Olson

A Case for Progressive Orthodoxy: Horace Bushnell, Part 1

Remembering the “Progressive Orthodoxy”
of Horace Bushnell, Part 1/3