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

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 2 - "Radical Love"



To the Unknown God
of Radical Love

by R.E. Slater

"What therefore you worship as unknown
this I now proclaim to you." Acts 17.23


Yes, I said to my Christian friend,
I will fellowship with you, and
with the Church, and in the church
    even when away or absent it's pews
    in heart and body but not in soul
    where God lives in me and I in Love.

But I also thought to myself,
No, I can no longer find sympathy
nor fellowship with my faith,
    for I seek another God...
    a God not of the church...
    a God unlike the church....

A God where the church may
find itself at times, but not where
God might find himself oftentimes
    when worshipped as unloving
    judgmental, wrathful; an absent
    Divine unattached to humanity.

This God I seek is a God of Love,
who offers service to the other,
who is against self-serving empires,
    and against empire-like religions
    holding human worth as a crime
    when unlike its own rules.

There is a kind of fellowship I seek
where I might find God's people,
but another kind of fellowship
    another kind of space whereby
    I might find all of God's people
    linked in love and loving fellowship.

The God I seek is the unknown God,
Unknown to us in so many ways,
but not in the ways of presence,
    ministry, advocacy, caregiving,
    promise, nor love; this God is the
    God I yearn to know, to be one.


R.E. Slater
May 21, 2023

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Radical Theology Cliff Notes

Home / thinking / emergent / Radical Theology Cliff Notes

July 23, 20213


Sometimes you stumble into something so wildly different than anything you have encountered before that it can give you a bit of whiplash.

When this happens in the realm of theology – it can cause a level of trauma to your faith that it feels as if it will never recover.

This is where translators and apologist can come in and play a healthy role.

I am not a practitioner of Radical Theology per-se. I am more of a practical theologian who is in dialogue with (or informed by) schools of thought that might be challenging to the population as a whole (or at least those who occupy the pews).

I received this week’s notes from one Mr. Tripp Fuller that he intended to utilize on the most recent episode of the High Gravity reading group co-hosted by the incomparable Peter Rollins. I took one look at them and thought to myself:

“Self… folks may not know what some of this stuff means. This is sad because much of it has deep implications on living out faith in the 21st century and even deeper implication on the cultural conversation that each of us finds ourselves caught up in the middle of.”

SO I thought it might be interesting to throw a few of the notes out there and to attempt to attach a helpful note on a few items.

Here is what I am up to: if you feel like you are interested in a Radical approach but find it out of reach or unclear … please respond in the comment section and we can either A) figure this out together or B) I will point you in a helpful direction if I know of one.


DEFINITIONS

Before we start – a couple of overly-simplistic definitions:

Radical Theology – a theological approach that is not tied to a congregation, denomination or other sanctioning body. The freedom of not being anchored in a confessional approach allows thinkers to interact with daring, innovative and contemporary schools of thought without consequence of consideration of how the outcome will impact faith communities (at least not primarily).

Confessional Theology – a theological approach rooted in both historic tradition and local expression. Confessional theology takes classical perspective and either tries to update it for the current context or attempts to return to some previous incarnation with the hopes of a purer expression or acceptable orthodoxy/practice.

Theo-poetics – born out of an awareness that all of our god-talk is both perspectival and provisional. When we speak of god/the divine we do so in imagery, metaphor, and symbol. This awareness of our limitations of language release us to confess that our signifiers (symbols) can never fully or truly represent that which they signify. The result is a freedom to explore, innovate, ratify, renovate and adapt our god-language in order to both expose idolatry and inspire creativity in how we express our beliefs.

Big Other – As Tom explains below “(in very simple terms) the set of customs and rules that regulate our horizontal social interaction and belief”. One way of conceiving of this is “That is to say, ‘the big Other’ is the ambience of the situation that comes through human ways of following situational “rules.” That is, without human beings, there is no ‘big Other.’” Addressing the Big Other is often manifest in a critique of a projection of a watcher in the sky sort of conception of god.

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Here are some of Tripp’s notes:

RADICAL V CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY
1) Radical Theology is parasitic to Confessional Theology… on its behalf. Radical Theology is being faithful to what is harbored in the name of ‘God’ – the event & not the tradition on the tradition’s terms.

2) Radical Theology reserves the right to ask any question. Because Confessional Theology is accountable to a tradition & its institutions there will be places where questions\conversations\operating conclusions will serves as “conversation stoppers.” Places in which that activity of critical thinking puts one out of the building. (ex. Trinity or Same Sex Marriage)

3) Radical Theology seeks to be EXPOSED to the Event w/in the Confessional Theology tradition but not PROPOSE a new articulation of the tradition.

4) Radical Theology rejects both the apathetic silence about the Big Other & the theist\atheist debate about the Big Other. The Big Other does not exist.

5) Radical Theology displaces the boundaries & certainty of ‘belief’ w/in Confessional Theology – the “how” w/out articulating another ‘what.’ Why? Whatever the ‘what’ is w/in a tradition doesn’t correlate to ‘how’ it is enacted.

6) Radical Theology affirms the Event contained IN but not BY Confessional Theology.

7) Radical Theology is a material (therefore a political) theology. God’s insistence is about our existence, here in the world, in relationships, & not about our continued or reanimated existence elsewhere. Radical Theology is about faith enacted for this world, not faith in another.

8) Radical Theology leaves the logos of Confessional Theology behind for theo-poetics. For the Radical Theology there is no divine-logic to be learned or sacred syllogisms to be mastered. When ‘words’ are used to close the circle around the truth, the poet protests ‘words’ enslavement… their demonic possession of the impossible possibilities that vanquished on behalf of the actual – the certain – the final – the verdict of Confessional Theology.

I thought it would be helpful at this point to outline how Caputo frames the turn from Confessional to Radical Theology in his amazing and short book “Philosophy And Theology” . In chapter 5 he illustrates 3 turns that converge together to make the BIG turn.

First up is the Hermeneutical Turn – this a confession we each read a text or interpret our experience from an angle. We all have a location and that means that we all see things from an angle.

Second is the Linguistic Turn – this is a recognition that every discipline and every tradition has its own set of vocabulary and concepts that form the ‘rules of the game’. Just as one can not play ‘Sport’ but plays A sport (football or baseball) so one can not speak ‘Language’ but A language. One can not practice ‘Religion’ but A religion. One must learn and abide by the rules of language game that one is playing.

Third is the Revolutionary Turn – this is an admission that things change… or rather that the way we see things changes. Working off of Kuhn’s idea of ‘paradigms’ and scientific revolutions, we readily admit that even where the data does not change (the universe) the way that we conceptualize it does periodically alter in radical ways.

These three come together to form the Postmodern Turn. They are also helpful for illustrating the sort of thing that Radical Theology is up to.

If you have any questions or comments I would love for post them below!

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I also wish to acknowledge that I left out references to Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Tillich, Descartes, and Kant. We can do all of that in a subsequent post if you want.

 

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 1 - "The Empire is Making You Sick"


"The Empire is Making You Sick"


Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 1
"The Empire is Making You Sick"

by R.E. Slater

"Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man. The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation. He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society. He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ. The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others. Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values." - Excerpt: Encyclopedia.com


Introduction

The whole premise of Radical theology is the deep feeling that the God of traditional Christianity can no longer be known within the church as it holds onto its religious methodologies and belief structures in such a way as to prohibit uncertainty and doubt and humanitarian values most required in a Christian religion popularly believed to require but the highest of forms of certainty and belief.

That this churchly covenant bound in blind trust and dogmatic legalism between itself, and the God it worships, must come first-and-foremost above all other succeeding commitments and behaviors - even that of humanitarian acts of social justice and equality which are most dearly desired across all areas of human endeavor and civilization. That the church's institutes are to be upheld firstly above all else. To be protected and defended by every means possible. And must always be decrying itself to be in a continual state of victimhood to society at large.

Responses to the Christian Church

This is the nub of argument by the secularized modernistic Christian Church clutching to its secularized spiritual faith to which the faithful postmodern Christian response adamantly declares in opposition that "It doesn't know, and wishes to explore, even through speculation, the realms of the Christian faith beyond its own self-avowed dogmatic words and actions." That uncertainty and doubt are the only good epistemic tools in which to do theology and to be Christian in the Christianly sense.

> Radical Theology

It is also where the postmodernal Protestant and Catholic Christian theology of radical theology begins when declaring the Christian faith bankrupt to it's highest sentiments and beliefs when seeking to re-envision the Christian faith "outside of itself" in order to see itself the more clearly. That this critical theological response might more resemble the approaches of non-Christian, agnostic, or atheistic radical responses than their Christianly antecedents when seeking a more holistic, more benevolent, Christian faith than what could be found in the present haggered religious aspects of modernal Christianity become a mere "empire-like" religion rather than a humbling, penitent, living faith.

> Progressive Christianity

At this same time, diverse theological branches arose from within mainline denominational Protestant and Catholic Churches identified broadly as Progressive Christianity. And when it became embraced by convicted evangelical church structures it took on a new identity known as Emergent Christianity birthed between the 1990s-2010s. Afterwhich the mainline and emergent streams of progressive Christianity merged together to simply be known broadly as Progressive Christians more deeply concerned with the positive-and-proactive Christianly behaviors of humanitarianism, social justice, and equality than they were with ostracizing and other-worldly Christian dogmas and sentiments.

> Process-based Christianity

Yet another obscure group was arising from the 1940s and 50s with the same radical and progressive concerns as their compatriots but with a unique signature which declared Westernized (secular) Christianity to be unhelpful and Continental Christianity too widely dispersed to offer any further corrective insight and faith living beyond its own cultural era. This body of Christians came to be known as Process-based Christians but (i) unlike Radical Christians preferred to stay within the traditional garments of the Church when critiquing its hoary structure while (ii) also sweeping up unto itself the many Progressive concerns of denominational and evangelical communities.

The unique signature of a Process Christian went one step farther than the Radical Christian or Progressive Christian when announcing that the philosophical-theological foundations upon which the traditional Westernized church had built  itself upon over the past 2000 years was inadequate to the postmodernal task lying ahead of itself. That in order to break away from its rising secularism it needed to re-examine its own non-processual philosophic-theologies and declare them anathema to the Westernized Church.

That it's traditional theological underpinnings had absorbed all the wrong elements of human belief about God, humanity and creation. That a more organic, more relational, philosophy focused upon the presence of the Divine-Human-World Cooperative must come to the fore of the Church's theology. That a solidarity between God, man, and creation be perceived and taught unlike the church's traditional theistic dogmas claiming theistic absence and wrathful judgment. And if done, then Christian humanism, social justice, and equality would naturally rise up within Westernized Analytic and Continental forms of theology centered in Love and not in proscript. One which would remove religious fidelity to unnatural church laws and church attitudes which had plagued its theologic structures since the days of Jesus.

> Summary

Consequently, the Christian branches of radical theology, Christian progressivism and Christian process theology found a more natural home with one another including a sympathetic nod to those radical theologians who in later generations have found themselves outside of the church doing the work of religious deconstruction and reconstruction for the purposes of recovering a humanely ethic of loving response, cooperative sharing, peace, and goodwill between all elements of humanity embraced by a plurality of religions and enculturations.

Moreover, process Christians believe that progressive Christians would find a greater fidelity with process theology which naturally underlays their beliefs than they would find with evangelical theologies which steer away from the foundational factors of Love into their own foundations of Christian dogma which hold the idea of love more loosely to their version of a God who sometimes loves but not always.

Modern v Postmodern v Metamodern

With the era of modernism came the era of Empire into the Christian faith. In this way the secularism which the traditional church disavowed became accepted and its modis operandi for doing the work of theology and mission.

Conversely, Radical Christians saw worldly Empire for what it was in light of the German Lutheran Churches embrace of German Nazism and its zenophobic and "white supremacy" responses towards non-Europeans, minorities, and ostracized humans. It became a radicalized form of Bonhoeffer's plea to the Church to not submit itself to evil and horror. Radical Christianity took Bonhoeffer's plea from his dead lips as he hung on the German SS gallows and spread his message in deep distrust of the Church's message and motives. It dissented and proclaimed God's death on the hand of those given to preach God's life in the midst of Empire.

Likewise, the Christian humanism which was active across Victorian England was spreading its way westward into America and southward into Europe. It declared that women had value and must vote; that children should not be working but in school; that the Enlightenment society of Western culture was neither so much enlightened nor helpful in breaking down human oppression and the invisibility of those minorities unwanted and overlooked.

To this history of Christian humanism came the Civil Race Riots of the 1960s under Martin Luther King (MLK) which re-established the urgency which Christian radicals had declared of the Church that it not repeat itself in America as it had in Nazi Germany. And in the 1990s the voices of Emergent Christians began crying out that the Christian humanism of the Westernized Church had been absorbed once again and without its former evocative voice for dissent and breakage to the church's embrace of Empire. That the Civil Reforms of the 1960s had been supplanted by the indolences of religion once again.

It was throughout this time of modernism giving way to its necessary and critical partner postmodernism that Process Christianity began to form in the Ivory towers of Christian and non-Christian universities. That Whiteheadian philosophic-theology offered a roadmap between the modernity-traps of Empire Christianity and the postmodernity criticisms of the Church.

That the Christian God was firstly Loving and secondly Holy and Justice. That if either of the last rose to prominence than the Love which is God would lose out to Church practices overly focused on holiness and judgment as reflected in Catholic monasteries and Protestant attitudes towards civil dominions of its own theocratic rules over Constitutional democracies. Neither of which bore God's Love in its centers.

More recently, as metamodern has strode into today's postmodern Western cultures we are seeing the pendulum swings between one form of modernism to the other of postmodernism with meta- (middle) swinging in between these polar opposites. It is here where a process foundation again finds the more promise.

For one, Process Christianity recovers Divine Love in its Theology of Love (as versus a Theology of holiness or judgment):

  • It keeps with the best traditions of Radical Christianity in critiquing Christianity as to its lusts for Empire and disregard for loving missionalization of God's Love.
  • It picks up Progressive/Emergent theologies wanting humanitarian action, social justice and equality.
  • It can work within all forms of civil governments without necessitating churchly religious dominionism (as opposed to crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fascism, acts of gender + minority oppression, etc).
  • And, it can discourse with all forms of religious cultures prejudiced towards loving cooperation, sharing of resources, and solidarity of cause such as that of building ecological societies balanced in environmental and societal health in ways Capitalism and Communism, neo-Maoism and Apartheidism cannot.

This then is the promise of Process-based global sphere of loving outlook regardless of religion, economy, or political government when refusing the trappings of "empire" and political division, fear of polyplural enculturation and assimilation in world of climatic, ethnic, and resource turmoil.

Conclusion

In summary, Faith in the transcendent innured God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man seeking a God of Loving Presence.

Nor can the theologian work any longer in the church if the church cannot allow uncertainty and doubt which challenges it's faith.

For congregations to be simply concerned with liturgy, prayer, and otherworldly salvation in not enough; it must show itself by its teachings of Love and Loving outreach.

The metamodern Christian, like other contemporary elements of society, must find their struggle in the retention of human values against technocratic societies forcing non-relational, non-organic societies of individuals utilizing connective methods without living out those methods.

In a word, we must continually work at re-etabilishing flesh-and-blood fellowships with one another across our communities, businesses, and nature itself. To be a true Athenian who sought to be Wholly-whole without succumbing to the isolating practices of technocratically dominionistic and oppressive forms of religious and societal culture.

That when speaking of God we recognize God's Loving Presence in the daily lives of ourselves, others, and all parts of creation. That a transcendent God is simply another name for a God who has removed himself from his duties of Love which he can never do as promised to Abram in the covanently cut halves of sacrifice (Gen 14) and the work, ministry, life, death, and resurrection of God's Self in Jesus.

To recognize that like Ghandi, Jesus as the God-man had the high hopes of overturning religion gone wrong. But more than Ghandi, Jesus was also the God who sacrificed himself that Love might Win.

"Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man. The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation. He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society. He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ. The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others. Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values." - Encyclopedia.com

R.E. Slater
May 21, 2023
edited May 27, 2023

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RADICAL THEOLOGY

by G. McCool


Radical theology was the name applied in the 1960s to a widely publicized current in American Protestant theology which was fundamentally skeptical about modern man's ability to speak meaningfully about God.

The theologians most prominently identified with the movement were William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren, and Thomas J. J. Altizer. Several other theologians were closely associated with the movement in the popular mind although their works were less radical in character. The British theologian, John A. T. Robinson, and the American theologian, Harvey Cox, shared a good deal of the radical theologians' skepticism and, like the radical theologians, Robinson and Cox advocated a religion of secular involvement rather than a religion of otherworldly salvation. Gabriel Vahanian, although not one of the radical theologians, shared their preoccupation with the challenge of contemporary secularism to Christian faith.

The theological divergencies among the radical theologians were too great for them to form a school. Nevertheless, their works are marked by a number of common convictions:

  • Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man.
  • The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation.
  • He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society.
  • He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ.
  • The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others [beyond the Church's pale or Society's interest. - re slater].
  • Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values.

The shift away from theological activism at the end of the [1950-60s] civil–rights struggle brought a decline of interest in radical theology. As a movement it did not survive the sixties, but the issues which it brought to prominence in America, e.g., the knowability of God, contemporary Christology, eschatology, and social activity, continue to occupy the attention of contemporary theologians.

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See Also: death of god theology.

Bibliography
t. j. j. altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia 1966); ed., Toward a New Christianity: Readings in the Death of God Theology (New York 1967).
t. j. j. altizer and w. hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis 1966).
h. cox, The Secular City (New York 1965).
w. hamilton, The New Essence of Christianity (New York 1961); "The Death of God Theology," Christian Scholar 48: 27–48; "The Shape of Radical Theology," Christian Century 82:1219–22.
j. a.t. robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia 1963); Exploration into God (Palo Alto, Calif. 1967).
g. vahanian, The Death of God (New York 1961); No Other God (New York 1966); ed., The God is Dead Debate (New York 1967).
p. van buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York 1963); Theological Explorations (New York 1968).
l. gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal of God Language (Indianapolis 1969) 107–145.
v. mehta, The New Theologians (New York 1966).
t. w. ogletree, The Death of God Controversy (Nashville 1966).

Saturday, May 20, 2023

From Postmodernism to Metamodernism, Part 4 - Sociologically





metamodernity
Posted ; filed under BooksComplexityNetworkedLearningSocialLearning.


Continued from: understanding the shift...


To an older culture, a newer one often looks amoral, as morality guides older cultures. To a newer culture, older cultures appear to be primitive, lacking complexity. But each culture has its pros and cons. The challenge in developing what Lene Rachel Andersen calls ‘metamodernity‘ is in taking the positive aspects of previous human cultures in order to create a global culture that can deal with the complexity of technology, climate emergency, and evolving political situations.


The Nordic Bildung perspective of societal evolution aligns with David Ronfeldt’s TIMN Model, which I have discussed in — understanding the shift. Andersen suggests we can build upon the positive aspects of each previous societal form in order to create a metamodern society. We do not need to destroy the old ways.


Indigenous (Tribes)

  • Play
  • Musique
  • Intimacy
  • Spirituality
  • Connection to nature

Pre-modern (Institutions)

  • Narratives
  • Architecture
  • Art

Modern (Markets)

  • Science
  • Democracy
  • Human rights

Post-modern (shift from Markets to Networks)

  • Criticism
  • Multiple perspectives

 

societal forms based on timn model

Metamodernity is about “networks of meaning” and “… allows that phenomena can have both absolute and relative meaning and significance.” 

“Furthermore, metamodernity can allow us to appreciate the entire human experience as a connected whole. It can allow us to seek out different kinds of knowledge in different places for different purposes.”

Andersen encourages each of us to keep our current meaning making, but acknowledge that, “I will never have the full picture, no matter how meaningful my current meaning making is to me, it is only one perspective on the world”.

This approach is similar to Kieran Egan’s cognitive levels and reflects the last of these — Somatic, Mythic, Romantic, Philosophic, and Ironic.

1. Somatic — (before language acquisition) the physical abilities of one’s own body are discovered, as are our emotions; somatic understanding includes the communicating activity that precedes the development of language; as the child grows and learns language, this kind of understanding survives in the way children “model their overall social structure in play”.

2. Mythic — binary opposites (e.g. Tall/Short or Good/Evil), images, metaphor, and story-structure are prominent tools in pre-literate sense-making.

3. Romantic — the limits of reality are discovered and rational thinking begins, connected with the development of literacy. Egan connects this stage with the desire to explore the limits of reality, an interest in the transcendent qualities of things, and “engagement with knowledge represented as a product of human emotions and intentions”

4. Philosophic — the discovery of principles which underlie patterns and limits found in data; ordering knowledge into coherent general schemes.

5. Ironic — it involves the “mental flexibility to recognize how inadequately flexible are our minds, and the languages we use, to the world we try to represent in them”; it therefore includes the ability to consider alternative philosophic explanations, and is characterized by a Socratic stance in the world. —The Educated Mind

While we do not need to destroy the old forms, we must also guard against their dark sides. Andersen warns about the pitfalls of each societal form, and we can see examples throughout the world, as we collectively deal with the current shift.


  • Indigenous — populism and science denial
  • Pre-modern — fundamentalism and dogmatism
  • Modern — fanaticism and weaponized technology
  • Post-modern — fatalism and nihilism

Andersen describes the Bildung approach to education as a core way for society to shift to metamodernity. It focuses early childhood education on understanding the world through stories (Egan’s Mythic understanding). Late childhood education is focused on socialization and more complex understanding (Egan’s Romantic understanding). Teen education can focus on specialization and a deep understanding of specific fields (Egan’s Philosophic understanding). Finally, adult learning is about developing diverse perspectives (Egan’s Ironic understanding), or what I would call a perspective of perpetual beta.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

The major challenge for a metamodern approach to take hold is in politics, which is deeply rooted in previous societal forms. Andersen concludes that metamodernism has the potential to enable us to clean up the messes we have made and pass on a better world to the next generations.

“If any of this is going to happen, we need to create the educational, Bildung and cultural institutions that allow us to be meaning making at a sufficiently high level of complexity. That anchor is locally, nationally, continentally, and globally. We also need to be at least bilingual so that we can enjoy both deep cultural roots where we grew up and the ability to have deep and rich conversations with people from around the globe. Politics must be about our understanding of the world, and money must be a means to increase our meaning-making and expand our symbolic world and our horizon.”

This is why I keep promoting personal knowledge mastery as one method of meaning making in our connected world.


* * * * * * *



What is Metamodernism?


Metamodernism is the philosophy and view of life that corresponds to the digitalized, postindustrial, global age. This can be contrasted against modern and postmodern philosophies.

Modern philosophy is the general mechanistic, reductionist worldview that is still today the common “mainstream” narrative people learn in schools and that has most adherents in Western societies and in other developed economies. The modern worldview first blossomed with the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century (Newton’s physics, Descartes’ philosophy and Francis Bacon’s scientific method). It holds that physics is the basis of reality and that science and rationality set people free. It is tied to such things as democracy, capitalism, socialism and human rights. It corresponds to the living conditions of industrial society within the frames of a nation state.

Postmodern philosophy is the critical perspective that has grown from social science and the humanities over the last century and it has taken a firm hold of universities and social movements during the last few decades. Postmodernism involves a critical stance towards knowledge and science, and holds that power structures, unconscious drives, cognitive biases and arbitrary social constructions enthrall human minds. We are not nearly as rational as we think. Hence, the story of science and progress is not necessarily true: viewed from the perspective of the oppressed and weak, the progress of civilization often amounts to little more than exploitation, smoke screens, excuses and a more systematized oppression. The postmodern mind grows from late modern societies in which mass media and cultural distinctions often cause more suffering in people’s lives than do direct economic inequalities.

Metamodern philosophy enters the scene only once the Internet and the social media have become truly dominant factors in people’s lives and when many of us no longer partake directly in the production and distribution of industrial goods. It is a worldview which combines the modern faith in progress with the postmodern critique. What you get then, is a view of reality in which people are on a long, complex developmental journey towards greater complexity and existential depth. The metamodern philosophy is a whole world of ideas and suppositions that are counter-intuitive to modern and postmodern people alike. But since both the modern and postmodern philosophies are increasingly outdated, these metamodern ideas are set to develop, take hold, and spread. One day, they may become as dominant as the modern philosophy is today.

To sum up, one can contrast the metamodern ideas against the modern and postmodern ones:

Modern ideas
  • Faith in science
  • Development and progress
  • Democracy
  • The individual
  • A meritocratic social order
  • Humanity can recreate nature by virtue of her reason

Postmodern ideas
  • Critical questioning of all knowledge and science
  • Suspicion towards all grand narratives about “progress”
  • Emphasis on symbols and contexts
  • Ironic distance
  • Cultures have been oppressed and ruined by modern society
  • Reveals injustice in “democratic” societies
  • Relations create the individual
  • A multicultural order where the weak are included
  • Humanity has destroyed the biosphere

Metamodern ideas
  • How can we reap the best parts of the other two?
  • Can we create better processes for personal development?
  • Can we recreate the processes by which society is governed, locally and globally?
  • Can the inner dimensions of life gain a more central role in society?
  • How can modern, postmodern and premodern people live together productively?
  • How can politics be adjusted to an increasingly complex world?
  • What is the unique role of humanity in the ecosystems of nature?

Moving from Postmodernism to Metamodernism, Part 3 - Psychologically


What Is Metamodernism?

Metamodernism is the cultural code that comes after postmodernism.

by Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
April 17, 2020

Reviewed by Jessica Schrader


This blog is co-authored by Daniel Görtz. He is a sociologist, social theorist, and writer. He holds a Ph.D. in police ethnography from Lund University and has been active in publishing books and articles on metamodernism as a political and philosophical theory. He currently works for Radicle, Dubai, and One Project, San Francisco.

If a year ago, someone asked me (Gregg) the question, "What is metamodernism?" I would have answered that I had never heard the term. It turns out, however, that it refers to a new, powerful, emerging movement that brilliantly captures my basic sensibility (see here for how metamodernism can be thought of as a kind of cultural sensibility). Daniel Görtz is a leading figure in the movement, and I am happy to be co-authoring this blog with him.

The most basic way to conceptualize metamodernism is to consider it as the mindset or sensibility or cultural code that comes after postmodernism (see here for the Wiki entry). As such, it is helpful to briefly review modernism and its relationship to postmodernism, which, in turn, sets the stage for understanding the emerging metamodern movement. Modernism is a mindset and cultural code that is formed during the emergence of modern science and the Enlightenment (thus, it has been around for ~300 years). It emphasizes reason and rationality, the power of science in deciphering foundational truths about the universe, capitalism, and the idea of human progress. It also emphasizes individuality and universal human rights. Most "modern" industrial societies are primarily organized by these values and codes.

Postmodernism arose mostly in the back half of the 20th century. In direct contrast to modernism, the postmodern viewpoint offers a skeptical critique of modernist knowledge and concludes that the knowledge we generate is always contextual. The postmodern argument is that there is an inevitable fusion of truth with social power. It was consolidated by philosophers like Jaques Derrida, Paul Feyerabend, and Michel Foucault. It manifested in movements such as the massive civil rights and feminist positions that emerged in the 1960s, as people demanded changes in the existing power structures that were seen to be connected to a Christian, white male hegemony. In 1979, Jean-François Lyotard captured the essence of the postmodern sensibility as being the absence of the grand narrative.

At its broadest contours, the metamodern view can be considered a kind of higher-order synthesis that includes and transcends both the modernist thesis about rationality and science and the postmodern antithetical critique. In addition, metamodernists tend to view the current state of our knowledge to be overly chaotic and fragmented and advocate for a more integrated pluralism that allows for positive, constructive work on what some have called a "post-postmodern grand meta-narrative."

Metamodernism in six dimensions

In a recent post to the metamodern discussion group, Daniel Görtz laid out six different domains or dimensions to the construct. Specifically, according to Görtz, metamodernism is: 1) a cultural phase; 2) developmental stage of society; 3) stage of personal development (with different complexly intertwined sub-categories thereof); 4) an abstracted meta-meme; 5) a philosophical paradigm, and 6) a sociopolitical movement. We share these six domains here for you to get a flavor for the movement and its emerging stripes.

1. Metamodernism as a Cultural Phase

Here metamodernism refers to trends within the culture at large that include the visual arts, theatre, architecture, literature, music, film, and so forth. In this context, it is the movement that comes after and redeems the cynicism and irony of postmodernism. Some examples are seen in the work of Vermeulen and van der Akker, comparable to the work of cultural theorists on post-postmodernismdigimidernismtransmodernismperformativismpostconstructivism, and enactivism.

2. Metamodernism as a Developmental Stage of Society and Its Institutions

As reviewed by this blog, we can trace the evolution of cultural justifications and the instructions that support them via identifiable stages. These include pre-formal indigenous justification systems that characterize hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies. Here oral narratives, face-to-face exchanges, and magical/mythic ritualistic practices to cultivate participatory meaning-making are key features.

Three to four thousand years ago, we saw the emergence of pre-modern formal systems of justification. These are the great religious and philosophical traditions, like Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic belief system. These belief systems consist of sacred written texts, offer a formal narrative for what is and what ought to be, and function to coordinate huge numbers of people. Approximately 400 years ago, we saw modernism and then approximately 70 years ago, postmodernism. As elaborated by Hanzi Freinacht (see here and here), metamodernism can be considered a socio-political vision for the next developmental stage to emerge and stabilize after modern society (see also #6).

3. Metamodernism as a Relatively Late and Rare Stage of Personal Development

As noted by many developmental psychologists, and perhaps summarized and popularized most broadly by Ken Wilber, we can trace the development of moral, cognitive, emotional, existential, and relational stages. Across development lines, people move from pre-verbal stages at birth into concrete and relatively simple ways of thinking as young children into more abstract and conventional forms of thinking and relating and then into more holistic, integrated, and post-conventional ways of being. As such, metamodernism as a cultural code also lines up with a higher stage of personal development. (See work on ego development and self-transformation by such theorists and researchers as Robert Kegan, Hanzi Freinacht, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Michael L. Commons, Michael Basseches and Michael Mascolo, Kurt Fischer, Theo Dawson, Terri O'Fallon, Clare Graves, and Gerald Young.)

4. Metamodernism as a Meta-Meme

A meme is a cultural idea or icon that replicates and spreads. Some consider metamodernism to be a kind of meta-meme. This refers to a deep code that consists of pattern-of-patterns within the realm of meaning-making and symbols, with its own social, economic, and technological dynamics. Consider, for example, the concept of "emerge" as described here. This movement can be thought of as a meta-meme that signals themes that come together in a coherent, non-arbitrary manner, where the different parts resonate with one another and mutually reinforce each other, particularly around the emergence of a digitized internet society. This is explored in Hanzi Freinacht's upcoming work, The 6 Hidden Patterns of History, and it has a precedent in the work of Jean Gebser.

5. Metamodernism as a Holistic Philosophical Paradigm

Metamodernism is a way of viewing the world that emphasizes a kind of integrated pluralism. As such, we can think of it as a paradigm or model or schema that consists of a philosophy that includes a family of ideas concerning ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics. Some examples include Karen Barad's agential realism and onto-epistemology and Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism.

Metamodern philosophical paradigms tend to emphasize elements such as holism; complexity science, information theory, and cybernetics; developmental views on emergence; ways of reconciling the natural and social sciences; a focus on the potential that bridges scientific and humanistic considerations. As a metapsychology for the 21st century, the Unified Framework, grounded as it is in the Tree of Knowledge theory of knowledge, represents an example of a metamodern philosophy that transcends and includes the key ontological, epistemological, and ethical considerations of both modernism and postmodernism.

6. Metamodernism as a Societal and Political Project

Metamodernism can also be considered a political project. Emerging primarily in relatively "progressive" countries and segments of "developed" societies, it is driven by ideals of creating open, participatory processes, collective intelligence, inner work and "embodiment," co-development, and an experimental view on rituals as well as attempts to "re-construct" everyday life and social reality, as well as attempts to bridge and synthesize perspectives of the Left and Right and the different sides of the culture wars, e.g., between traditionalists and progressives. Metamodernists tend to emphasize inner development as a political and sociological issue, deliberation and perspective taking as political tools, and focus on the intersection of inner depth and outwards complexity. The demographics of this movement is primarily drawn from what Hanzi Freinacht has termed the "Quadruple-H population" (Hipsters, Hackers, Hippies, and Hermetics).