Reflections on my dialogue with Peter Rollins

On Whitehead’s reading, God conditions Creativity—which by itself lacks a definite vector and can be akin to nothingness or chaos—and gives it both aim and memory, so that process can take on a historical trajectory. God instills a sense of purpose but we are never going to arrive at a final, finished state. Whitehead’s theology attempts to provide... See more

The word “God” is like a stick of dynamite. It remains valuable precisely because its utterance sets off such potent cultural and conceptual reverberations. Whitehead, in his own way, used it to name something at once tender and cosmic, intangible yet inescapable, the poet of the world who does not create the world from nothing but helps us make me... See more

Catherine Keller might be the bridge between Whitehead’s thought and those forms of radical theology. She develops a kind of theopoetic approach, evoking an aesthetic response to the mystery of existence and shifting our relationship to talk about God away from certainties and proofs. Theology becomes more akin to painting than science. One of the ... See more

Schelling differentiates between the divine ground—an unconscious depth or yearning—and divine existence, which is God growing into time, manifesting in the dynamic evolution of the cosmos, and eventually, incarnating as a human being.

Schelling and Whitehead each depict God as a being somewhat at odds with Itself. In Schelling’s account, God harbor... See more

When he thinks of the divine, it is not as some grand logician but as the poet of the world. God does not make the world but makes something of the world, allowing us to find or create meaning in the creative onrush of reality despite the wreckage of history. God leaves open the possibility of reconciliation even if it in fact never fully arrives. ... See more

There has been criticism of the very use of the word “God” because it comes with so much baggage. I do not believe in the God Richard Dawkins rejects, and I understand the desire to avoid the term altogether. Yet I remain hesitant to simply throw it out, because to do so might be to break with a lineage of philosophical and spiritual reflection tha... See more

Rahul asked us to characterize authentic spiritual experience, which I said might be marked by humility, self-emptying, and a displacement of ideological certainties. It can feel disorienting rather than confirming of a final sense of identity or an ultimate solution. That does not prevent someone, after being shattered, from picking up the pieces ... See more