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

The Guardian -

Trump ally Michael Flynn condemned over call for ‘one religion’ in US

MarketWatch -

Michael Flynn draws condemnation for saying

 U.S. should only have one religion

Google Search - Extremist Authoritarianism in the Church

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

Religion and Authoritarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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/

diana's podcasts -
https://dianabutlerbass.com/online/

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...

tripp's site -
https://trippfuller.com/

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

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 2

Process vs Classic Church Theism:

Cobb v Geisler

Part 2

by R.E. Slater

Process Theology Debate:

Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb

Posted: Aug 21, 2021

De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of 

classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic system putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as process thought itself that aren't there. Pleases note: Part 2 is not on the youtube video nor could I locate it anywhere except here as linked below." - R.E. Slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism

"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the strange, panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.

* * * * * * * *

Earlier Posts

Part 1 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 2 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 3 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 4 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

* * * * * * * *

The Story of the Bible 2

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon

even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

When it comes to evangelical theology one must realize almost immediately that its theology lies in the eclectic collection of many, many philosophies upon which it has been built. Mostly Greek Platonism, and later, Hellenised Neo-Platonism. Afterwards it goes through various permutations of Aristotelian Scholasticism, Reformational Enlightenment, pre-industrial Modernism, 19th Century Neo-Modernism, and now some kind of pre-structural postmodernism. All the while claiming evangelic theology has remained "true" to the Bible.

Which I find convenient as the evangelical bible curiously has remained amazingly "true" to their preferred collection of church creeds, dogmas, tenants, and doctrines. Each one formed as a faith-outcome under the philosophical theories of their century and belief system.

More so, evangelics know they are the right God and right belief because their preachers and theologians each tell them of the "correctness" of their faith as only a dogmatist can say such things. And for those bible teachers and theologs who would dare question evangelical church tradition? Well, excommunication from evangelical churches, schools, journals, publishers, and social media is the usual result. All-in-all its a nice, neat, tidy little system of religious control by evangelics of their contents and message.

But the Bible Tells Me So

Well yes it does, doesn't it? Especially if read in such a way which parrots back to us our belief systems. If you want a warrior God of wrath and hell, it's there. So too, a gospel based upon the Jewish legal propitiation tradition. Inerrancy? Inspiration? Divine revelation? Just read the bible and you'll find it. Reason to hate gays, condemn feminism, mock false teachers who preach God's love. There's plenty of sin verses to warn of "other gospels." My favorite are the knowing the will of God so certainly that any question we have can be found in the real Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that have been copied and recopied. In them we can instantly know the ancient customs of the day and how the religious people back then went wrong and God had to judge them with suffering, death, exile from their homes, and whatnot.

Yes, I'm being cynical as I look around at the church of my day and wonder how we are any different from the religious people back in the bible with only their rabbi's and the Holy Spirit to guide them. So if the bible tells me so and God's love is not being visibly seen, shared, or felt, then I suppose all of us better re-examine how our beliefs got to a place where all people are condemned, going to hell, and disbelieved because our preachers, books, journals, and schools have told us only our own interpretations of the bible are the correct versions of the "true" bible we know and love.

Philosophies now and then

I know of no philosophy which would say it is the correct, God-given philosophy to read the bible in. But they are there across its pages to the scholarly eye versed in ancient, pre-modern, post-scholastic forms of thinking, being, and doing. And when interpreting the bible's collection of ancient legends and narratives it would be best if those passages were better considered from their point of view rather than our own glossy point of view.

So let's take a further step back and ask what kind of philosophies permeated the collection of ancient Semitic (Near-Eastern) narratives within the sanctified, inspired pages of the inerrant evangelic Bible. Pick any ancient Kingdom - from the Akkadians to the Sumerians, from the Amoritic to the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Perian Kingdoms. And don't forget to include the many Egyptian dynasties either to complete this short list of cultural beliefs, legends, superstitions, folklore, and mystifying astrological observations where each empire, each civilization, held a kind of philosophy unique to their religious belief systems. And if you read the Bible knowledgably - that is, being familiar with ancient language, customs, and beliefs, you can see each of these era-specific philosophies readily standing out.

click here to enlarge

What's the point? Over nearly 4000 years of ancient Old Testament history, plus another 2000 years of New Testament history (if we include the historic creedal eras of the church) you can imagine the kaleidoscope of philosophic variants washing up upon the shores of religious beliefs and civilization to be imbibed, composed, synthesized, re-composed, and re-synthesized, into a labyrinth of religious  beliefs again, and again, and again.

At which point the Bible scholar comes along to decipher these beliefs to pick and choose among them the most accurate portrayal of God and religion. This scholar would be a man or woman knowledgeable in ancient linguistics, morpho-orthography, social anthropology, ancient Semitic and Greek culture, Hellenistic culture, and over-and-above all this, hopefully knowledgeable with all major Western, Continental, Near-Eastern, and Oriental philosophies over the past 2000 years.

All this so that we can state as "true" believers that we have a "true" bible which tells us of the "true" God we believe in. So let me ask again... "How do we know we have come to have all these theistic assurances? For one, biblical theologs, like Norman Geisler, have come along in their day to tell us what we should believe. But I also suspect evangelic beliefs like yesteryear's creedal doctrines all hinged on the kind of religious tradition we were raised in - or are actively involved - to claim such religious hubris.

click here to enlarge

The Art of Biblical Hermeneutics

Historically, as cultures have grown they tend to be built upon each earlier generation's labors and energies. It would not be uncommon to walk around London, England, to dig down 80 feet, perhaps more, and discover, layer by layer, the earlier histories of the men and women living their lives out in Old London stretching across the eras of its past back to its earliest days upon the Thames.

This illustration would not be unlike a theologian's efforts - be they ancient or modern. Each bible scholar of the past has waded across the muck of outrider gnostic philosophies intermixed with their own philosophical cultural traditions. And in their mirey treks have attempted to ask the question who is God? How would God communicate Himself to mankind? What would God say to us now? What would it mean to us today? And why would God's revelation be important?

We might ask the further question of whether a biblical speaker speaks for God or man; and if his or her revelations fairly represents the God we think we know off the biblical page? Whether in our defensive Christian apologies we are really sharing the God of the bible or the God of our belief systems? When I listen to dear Norman Geisler I find myself asking this question again and again as he strives to be the best servant of the Lord in the history of servant leaders of the bible and the church.

For myself, I've tried to make it really, really simple since I don't pretend to be a smart man. Perhaps  a diligent student of the Lord's trying to put things together in my own way, but I need something unremarkable about God and His church to help me know if what I believe about God is worthy of my time, attention, life, family, and energies.

The Art of Christian Living

After 6000 years of communicating to man - which the bible tells is what God has been doing through human voices, convictions, events both natural and man-made, His prophets, priests, apostles, and especially Jesus, His Son, Word, and very God of very God. Jesus, who upended all previous and future religious voices with a simple dictum....

Can you guess what that dictum was? What Jesus summed up as man's duty to God? Jesus said He could sum up God's revelation in one word which would hold us responsible before His Father and one another. That word? Yes, the word love.

Imagine, all the time and effort so many have put into their faith and belief systems coming down to understanding, receiving, giving, being, and becoming the incoming and outgoing process event of love. More a verb than it is a noun, except as a noun it defines the verb which is to be acted upon. God is love. Not was. Is. Love. The Apostle John wrote and rewrote this simple little word across the pages of his first epistle, I John. In Jesus he heard the word love and so reminded the Jesus follower to learn to love because it's the hardest thing to do, be and share.

Certainly, there's got to be more to the Christian religion, or any religion!, than this simple word love, isn't there!? I mean Yahweh took pains to tell us of Himself as the God above all other polytheistic gods! That He is the Sovereign Creator over every creative force! That He is the Heavenly Guide to all furtive soul travellers seeking the meaning of life! But to camp down on the word love when power, glory, divinity, majesty, rulership is so much more to God than love!???

Yes, perhaps Jesus got it wrong. That Jesus really didn't understand Himself as the Creator God of the universe. As the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But I don't think so. When I read bible I read of a Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52.13-53.12). Of a God who was "Cut as Abram' Covenant of Protection and Guide (Genesis 15.12-19), the Altar upon which lambs are slain before the foundation of the world (Exodus 12.21-28), whereupon sin and evil has been laid upon His uplifted Cross (John 19.23), that all rulers and kingdoms come before the God of sacrifice, love, and service, to be judged for their deeds (Revelation 19-21).

How can God's love rectify a host of philosophies, religious traditions and beliefs, and human effort? Because, my friends, it does. It will. It can. Love God. Love neighbor. This was my very simple determinant if a church or a society or a belief is worthy of being trusted, followed, and exampled. Of course, I wish to speak the most correct thoughts about the God I love. Which is also why I am being quite disagreeable with my past fundamental and evangelical heritage gone off the rails in so many unloving, ungodly directions.

So I think we can do better. But to start let's learn to love. The knowledge part is irrelevant without the loving part. That we, as Jesus followers, know and share the God of love who defines His holiness, His Being, His Essence as LOVE first, last, and foremost. Our Lord is the Alpha and Omega of love worthy to be heard, imagined, and testified to by word and deed.

Lastly, Love is a lifelong lesson in itself. I can't imagine anything harder to do then to love one another in all our differences. Let's start today as Jesus had asked His followers many years ago. Let's leave everything else aside until our spouses, kids, family, friends, workmates, neighbors, schools, churches, and communities know we our the children of God because we love as God loves and wish to love all we meet in loving support, encouragement, respect, thought, service, act, and deed. Help us, O' Lord ,to love. Amen.

R.E. Slater

November 12-13, 2021

click to enlarge

The Meaning of Life According to Different Philosophies

https://blog.adioma.com/meaning-of-life-according-to-philosophy/

Process vs Classic Church Theism: Cobb v Geisler, Part 1

Process vs Classic Church Theism:

Cobb v Geisler

Part 1

My Story, Part 1

by R.E. Slater

Perhaps having come to process philosophy and theology late in life has given to me the added advantage of being intimately familiar with the fundamental and conservative evangelical positions of classic theism.

I was raised and taught within the Baptist & Reformed traditions of belief through my first five+ decades of life and only lately became aware of a shift within my faith tradition though I had felt it for years. Even as far back as university.

A shift that had been rumbling in my soul for many decades but at the last was resurrecting in my heart and head even as I was trying to ignore it as I concentrated on business, raising kids, being seriously active in community, school boards, public and civic commissions, youth rec, and  adult sports.

When the Lord called me to begin a very broad and deep personal transformation from classicism to process Christianity it was something I withstood for a number of months.

And now, when I listen to Norman Geisler debate John Cobb I no longer can hear Geisler's theistic arguments knowing how far astray they have gone from declaring the biblical faith as set in the Hebrew, and later, Greek Scriptures as Jesus and the prophets had at one time perceived them.

And while I now better understand, and can appreciate Cobb's responses, to the many dodges and false trails of Geisler's beliefs as he obstinately upheld a Christian tradition, these same arguments bounce around today from pulpit to pulpit unwilling to listen and learn for fear God and the gospel of Christ will be lost.

Let me just say, from my personal experience as one who was once sympathetic to these apologies, that God was never lost or outgrown. If anything, God is larger, more relevant, and more amazing in every aspect of His Triune being even as my Christology has found a firmer footing from a metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, and theological basis. Nothing was lost but my unbiblical ideas of the bible and God.

And there's the rub, and the challenge. I fully understand it and do confess a sensibly trained Christian cannot approach process theology without a willingness to let go and let God. But I will have you also know, I can preach the bible as I was taught without losing an ounce of God or God's Word.

Epistemologically, its not like relocating the football field's goalposts. It's more like relocating the entire football field and then abandoning it altogether. And while this is done, to reinvent an entirely new game and then disuse that as well. When the bastions of our personal foundations are uplifted and destroyed its like having to start over again but without actually starting over. Just rethinking what you've heard and placing it into a more proper, godly, salvific context. At least that was how I experienced it.

Lastly, let me share my "conversation with God" when He called me to this task. I took it very seriously and really didn't want anything to do with it. Here it goes:

God, "Hi. Let's talk. I need your help. Let's take up this thing called emergent Christianity and run with it a bit. See where it leads. My emergent/progressive servants are enlivening the Faith again by shaking it from its anomalies and foibles. It's time we take this a step or two further. Can you help Me?"

Me, "Lord, No, I cannot. I've been out of lay ministry for quite a while now and was never formally active in it to begin with though I have an M.Div. degree. Use your own ministers and pastors here in Bible Belt, USA. They're familiar with Scriptures. They like to shout and state their hard-headed opinions. And they've become their own public institutions which your people will listen too. PLUS, I have confidence in them! I am not qualified."

The Lord, "Yes, yes, yes, but it's you I want, not them."

But Lord, "Please, give this burden to someone else! I am not fit for such a task!"

Yahweh, "Funny you should mention that... I've heard this line several times before."

Me, "Sheesh, Lord! Really?! You're going to play the guilt-trip card?! Do you realize I'll lose all my Christian friends, probably my family too, and have no church in town to fellowship with once Rob Bell and the emergent crew are scrubbed out by my well meaning, officious church brethern."

El Shaddai, "Rob bore his burden as well as he could. You saw him suffer for My name as he tried to speak of ME in ways people, both saved and unsaved, could hear. But I need a few more men and women soldiers. Now take up my mantle and speak My Love into a religious world which no longer can see or hear ME."

Me, "Thanks Lord. It'd be a deep privilege but this will be an absolute disaster. My heavy heart is already broken and certainly needs repair. Perhaps, maybe, this is the thing to help me get re-righted again."

Jesus, "Ah, Hey! Nice seeing you and Abba and talking this out! Great! You and my Father will get along just fine but first, one thing.

Me, "Oh, hey. Hi. I'm afraid to ask what this one thing might be?"

Jesus, "Nothing hard really. The very first thing you'll need to do is to learn to unlearn in order to relearn from my Father and I. Our Comforter will lead and guide you along your way. Ta Ta. And thanks again!"

The first thing you'll have to do is to learn to unlearn to relearn. Let's begin there."

And with that, God abandoned me after calling me. His Spirit then led me into a very dark, very lonely, wilderness which didn't end until it needed to be ended. Throughout my abandonment God was not with me. I was very much in a black pit and felt forsaken. And there I stayed refusing to leave until the job was done.

Paradoxically, though I felt keenly God's absence He curiously left His Spirit as guide and mentor. I know, I know, the One is the same as the Other but semantically, in my classical tradition, this is how I felt.

And with that my journey began. Out of the church and into a large wilderness of doubt and uncertainty where no one else could go but me. With no help from no one and nowhere to turn. My burden was mine alone.

Even so Lord, thank you for this privilege - as ill timed, unwanted, and without any good outcome as it felt and came to be. In hindsight it was what needed to be done.

R.E. Slater

November 12, 2021

*I'll continue Part 2 when I begin to list out the pros and cons of the debate I am leaving below. Unfortunately, it sounds like it cut out at the end where it was really beginning to get interesting. For now, give a listen, and list out the things which really are "faith-breakers for you." I made my own list up many, many years ago. And though I never set out to solve this list, it eventually began to sort itself out as the years rolled by. Which is why I've put a lot of effort into Relevancy22. It's for people asking questions and looking for direction. For myself, I have found process faith a very helpful foundation for my Baptist-Reformed tradition to be set upon. It has made this faith heritage much, much more meaningful. For others, maybe not. But once the Lord taught me there is never any reason to go backwards - only forwards - it simply has made sense to go forwards in this way. But to get there it only took the dismantling of my Jesus-Creed faith; you know, "No big deal."

Process Theology Debate:

Norman Geisler vs. John Cobb

Posted: Aug 21, 2021

De Veritate Apologetics and Philosophy

In this debate, Norman Geisler defends the position of 

classical theism against the process theology of John Cobb.

Comment: "As a former evangelic I totally understand the need for evangelicalism to claim victory in this debate. But now, as a process guy, I see all too plainly the obtuseness of Geisler's claimed victories and how he argued from his own self-referential and self-reinforcing theistic system putting words into Dr. Cobb's speech as well as process thought itself that aren't there. Pleases note: Part 2 is not on the youtube video nor could I locate it anywhere except here as linked below." - R.E. Slater

Overview: Geisler defends Evangelicalism

"Process Theism versus Classical Theism" - Click here to hear Part 1 and Part 2 of a fascinating debate from the 1980s between Norman Geisler and John Cobb on Process Thought (a.k.a. Process Theism, Process Theology, Process Cosmology, Process Philosophy) and the strange, panentheistic God-world model of process philosopher A.N. Whitehead. John Warwick Montgomery was present at the debate and told Norm that he had just totally destroyed Process Thought.

* * * * * * * *

Earlier Posts

Part 1 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 2 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 3 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

Part 4 - Process Theology v Classical Theology

* * * * * * * *

The Story of the Bible 1

"Every good theology needs a great philosophy to rest upon

even as a great philosophic-theology must rest on love."

- R.E. Slater

Classical Theism leans heavily upon literalism, biblicism, and the proof-texting of its own apologetics. Back in the 16th Century, Christianity was dealing with the same questions of faith trying to determine how one's belief is valid beyond merely believing. I share there attempt further below by roughing out Edward Herbert's epistemological approach to believing in God.


As a process theologian, let's just say, faith is a Spirit thing.

You cannot prove God. But we know God is there because, well, His Spirit has confirmed it upon our heart.

Nonetheless, our faith must be examined, and if not, it becomes a worthless thing which cannot relate to our mission field. You know... those people out there whom we meet everyday in contemporary society.

Now many we meet will like the old timey cultural mores from present church-cultural traditions and prefer to see life through a bottle as the church has always done. However, there are many more who do not prefer to look at life in this way. They wish to challenge faith. Test it out. See how it runs on the roads of philosophy, science, psychology, technology, literature, anthropology, and such like. And these are the people who are my mission field more so than the Christian church. Seekers requiring a more up-to-date, relevant, and contemporary Christian faith.

So when I listen to "Norman, the Man, Geisler," with his shirt-sleeves rolled up vigorously defending and preaching the faith, I'm also listening in a process way to all the things he is bringing up wrongly. That he is purposely saying wrong for effect while-all-the-while reinforcing his faith as the rightful faith of the Bible Belt church. His church. His Midwest religious body of beliefs.

And with a nod to process personalism, "Yes, Norman's very religious being had changed during that hour of debate" though he thought it not so as he hunkered down in his heart chalking up a victory for God by standing against the process heretics of his day." Well done, Norman. You've proved process' observation that we can, and will, change by our everyday lived experiences even as Pharaoh did before God when listening to his adopted, half-brother Moses.

Moreover, Norman's faith, as was my own faith not many years before, is the kind of Christian faith that America was built by white nationalism and exclusion, manifest destiny, ungenerous capitalism, indentured service, childhood work factories, racial slavery of  Blacks, Asians and Native Americans, and the succession of good white Christians from the Yankee abolitionist states of America.

So yes, if you're going to bail out now on process theology know that God's love goes to everyone and not to one's own self-declared religious body unwilling to listen to God while more-than-willing to break an expanding, polyplural democracy seeking civil and religious rights for all. Remember, what one believes bears the outcomes of one's faith in humanity. I, for one, chose process as much for its outcomes as I did because it made complete theological sense. Perhaps Herbert (below) will allow my faith-arguments based upon his own previous surmises of the past.  :)

R.E. Slater

November 12, 2021

De Veritate = "Truth is found in the Thing or the Object" of belief, reasoning, or proof

I.

De Veritate, is a major ecclectic work of Edward Herbert published in 1624. It approaches a kind of epistemological knowing from a number of bases:

• truth in the thing or the truth of the object;
• truth of the appearance;
• truth of the apprehension (conceptus);
• truth of the intellect.

II.

Further, the faculties of the mind may be arranged in four indisputable groups:

• Notitiae communes - refers to the natural instinct, or a kind of intimate knowledge, or the strong emotion borne within the human soul as innate instincts of humanity borne of divine origin;

• Sensus internus - the internal sensory perception which feels love, hate, fear, pangs of conscience borne upwards into the soul via free will and communis notitia;

• Sensus externus - the sensory perception of external data related to rational reasoning. Example: sensus communis in the thought of Aristotle, refers to the mental faculty that takes data provided by the five senses and integrates them into unified perceptions.

• Discursus - human reasoning, which is the least certain and only given consideration when other sensory faculties fail.

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Process Shorts - The Process God of a Process Universe

The Process God of a Process Universe

by R.E. Slater

The God of process who spoke process from His Being

into a process-less primordial void. - re slater

What if the universe, pre-Big Bang, began with the ability to create life in its potentiality as a primordial cosmic singularity? That in it's very structures it would be literally impossible not to create life?

If, underlying all of the universe's randomness and chaos, it's teleology was always conditionally set to relentlessly pursue, bring forth, adapt to, and overcome, any obstacle which denied to it's inner cosmic core the insatiable urge to create, to birth, to bring wellbeing, to any form of energy or force?

Process theology says the process God of creation breathed into (gave to) the very nature of the existing primordial soup of the (uni)cosmos, His essence, His being, His very Self, into "becoming" upon an eternally un-formed, infinitely dense, massively uniform, primordial space yet to birth time, matter, and the quantum forces we see today.

That is, God gave to the void of creation His own process Image, Nature, Self, and Being. 

Which means that from like to like, from our process God to a process universe, process is therefore all around us in its every form because process is inherent in the very structure and outcomes of creation.

That this God of process, who was the First Order of all succeeding processes, had filled the entirety of creation with orders-and-orders-of-magnitudes of endless, process-becoming, creativity. That the Creator God filled this primordial cosmic soup-of-a-singularity to overflowing with the insatiable urge to overcome all barriers, all obstacles, in its need to bring forth life, creativity, novelty, and wellbeing in all their forms and meanings.

That creation's very cosmic essence is eternally in the process of creative, spontaneous, becoming. And because its cosmocreational structure is thus, it may give birth to universes, multiverses, and create an unstoppable, infinite array of evolutionary becoming.

That the God of the possible came upon the improbable and filled the very building blocks of creation with life upon life upon life.

That this "ether-like" spirit-quality drives itself forward against all that is not life.

We may then call this urge, drive, force, or energy, the process structures of the cosmos which comes from the God who births all processes into *becoming (rather than being) from His own Being into that which was not structured like this before.

Process then is both the starting point - and inherent embedded teleology - found in every portion of creational-cosmic existence wherever we look.

In essence, life strives for life in all that becomes from being.

R.E. Slater

November 6, 2021

edited November 12, 2021

*That is, creatio continua v creatio ex nihilo, meaning God births from what's there rather than births from nothing; assuming the primordial void is as old as God Himself - or perhaps, when the primordial void came into being so did God; but the former remained as void until the latter spoke into it life.

Process theology allows for both views but it makes more sense in the science realm to apply it to the creatio-primordial rather than thinking something can be born from nothing. Science says there must be something from which "nothing" can be born.

Thus, God acted upon the primordial void as versus creating the primordial void. It makes God no less God but it definitely screws with the classic theistic mindset built upon Greek and Hellenistic philosophies. - re slater