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

Monday, June 26, 2023

The Collected Papers I - of Process Philosopher & Theologian Andrew M. Davis



The Collected Papers of Process I
Philosopher & Theologian Andrew M. Davis

Program Director, The Center for Process Studies

Biography

Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. He is Program Director for the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology.

A native of northern California, he was born and raised among the towering redwoods of Occidental and the meandering woodlands of Santa Rosa’s Bennett Valley. It was out these natural settings that his passion for the questions of philosophy, theology and religion first emerged.

He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. An educator and advocate of cross-cultural knowledge and religious literacy, his studies have led him to a variety of religious contexts and communities around the world, including India, Israel-Palestine, and Europe.

He received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Biblical Studies, the 2017 fellowship with FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) and the 2020 Presidential Award for Academic Excellence. He was recently nominated and elected as a fellow for the International Society of Science and Religion (ISSR).

He is a poet, aphorist and author or editor of several books including:
  • How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere: An Anthology of Spiritual Memoirs (2018);
  • Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (2019);
  • Depths as Yet Unspoken: Whiteheadian Excursions in Mysticism, Multiplicity, and Divinity (2020);
  • Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (2020, nominated for the ISSR 2022 Book Prize);
  • Nature In Process: Organic Proposals in Philosophy, Society and Religion (2022);
  • Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy (2022).
His Curricular Supervisors were: Philip Clayton, Roland Faber, and Daniel A. Dombrowski


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PAPERS

This paper was written for the 2022 Keith Ward Conference at Virginia Theological Seminary. It wi... more 
40 Views
This short chapter appears in Partnering With God: Exploring Collaboration in Open and Relational... more 
67 Views
God, Value, and Ontological Gratitude: On the Axiological Foundations of Worship, 2020
What kind of God is most worthy of worship? This question is historically significant to open, re... more 
80 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
37 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
131 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
48 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
108 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
65 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Process Philosophy and Theology.
118 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Comparative Theology and Religion.
223 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Comparative Theology and Religion.
55 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Comparative Theology and Religion.
61 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Comparative Theology and Religion.
144 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Comparative Theology and Religion.
44 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology.
27 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology.
190 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology.
83 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology.
48 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology
70 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in Constructive Natural Theology.
49 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion
61 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion
51 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion.
159 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion.
188 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion.
78 Views
This brief essay derives from qualifying examinations in the Philosophy of Religion.
32 Views
Personal Reflections on FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics), Su... more 
58 Views
BOOKS
Process Century Press, 2022
The new physics, beginning in the early twentieth century, caused a rupture in the longstanding m... more 
3 Views
Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
This book newly articulates the international and interdisciplinary reach of Whitehead’s organic ... more 
10 Views
The shift to organic modes of thought undergirding Whitehead’s “philosophy of organism” continues... more 
44 Views
Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy, 2021
Published in Palgrave Macmillan's Perspectives in Process Philosophy Series, this book newly arti... more 
110 Views
Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy is an investigation into the nature... more 
59 Views
Whitehead's thought continues to attract attention in mathematics and metaphysics, but few have r... more 
43 Views
Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory, 2019
How do we make ourselves a Whiteheadian proposition? This question exposes the multivalent connec... more 
72 Views
Much can be gained from trailing the spiritual narratives of those who have traveled ahead of us,... more 
602 Views