Tag: whitehead

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balanced rockI gave a paper at the Society for the Study of Theology conference #SST2017 this week, the underlying argument of which concerned the idea of peace, and how we conceive of it.

The view I tried to get across, in the space of a couple of thousand largely inadequate words was a relatively simple one: the popular idea of peace (lack of disruption) is distinctly different to ‘peace-as-peace’ which is not characterised by a lack of disruption, but rather by an acceptance of it.

A key characteristic of peace-as-peace is that it can’t be grasped. Peace as lack of disruption can be, it can be planned for, strategised, grabbed hold of. But peace-as-peace can’t, it come as a gift, an event to be experienced.

Peace as lack of disruption encourages the building of concrete certainties, in many cases using literal concrete. It requires the development of borders, of demarcations, of peace walls. In religions it requires the demarcation lines of denominational boundaries and written doctrines.

But peace-as-peace doesn’t need these same safeguards, it has no requirement for dividing lines, or clear statements of purpose or intent. This sort of peace is like the manna that fell from the sky for the children of Israel, it’s not for storing up or warehousing, its for experiencing in the moment.

Alfred North Whitehead warned of the danger of aiming for peace, and ending up with it’s ‘bastard substitute’: anaesthesia. The effect of anaesthetic is to give the sense of no disruption, no pain. But while this may seem like an ideal goal, may appear to be what we want, it is in fact not the blessing it seems.

Peace-as-peace doesn’t try to get rid of the pain, or the disruption, but accepts it and then welcomes the gift of peace in that space. John Cobb said peace is the ‘direct apprehension of one’s relatedness with that factor in the universe which is divine’, leaving us with a sense that of the various nick-names which have been given to that divine nature: God, Great Spirit, Great Fact, ground of being, etc. ‘disruption’ may well describe the divine as adequately as any of them.

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exploreIt’s been a long time since I kept a regular blog, but after watching social media turn increasingly anti social, and at the same time becoming increasingly aware of its limitations in terms of communicating anything more than a very basic message, I’ve turned back to the blog.

Astute observers will notice of course that this is a new blog, my old site is retired, or at least too tired. Too old and too out of date, and no longer the direction I want to take things. So this is the start of something new.

I’m moderately embarrassed at what I feel is the vanity of having the site named after me – but my long term plan is to post some of my more academic writing here, and for that reason if no other it suits me better to have a site name which refers directly to me. So there it is, that which I have previously disliked elsewhere has come close to home.

Currently my reading and writing is following a number of inter-related themes, they include: ‘the absurd’ arising from writers such as Camus and Kierkegaard; a pursuit of contemporary process theology and theopoetics through the writings of a number of interesting people, particularly Catherine Keller but a number of others too (Cobb, Whitehead, Pittenger etc.; and a continuation of my old obsession with panentheism.

Those who know me will recall that I’ve long been interested in ‘new monasticism’ of one sort or another, and something of that remains, although following in Bonhoeffer’s footsteps I’m now more invested in ‘new theology’, specifically religionless Christianity, than I am in what went before. I’ve certainly developed a more thoroughly pluralist approach, and if anything an even greater concern with the problematic idea of the ‘other’.

Meditation and apophaticism continue to loom large for me too, and I may yet continue to write about what I call Zen Christianity. For now though my main reading/writing focus has to related more directly to my PhD research, which is on post-secular spiritual capital. It’s highly likely that pieces of work specifically to do with that will appear here from time to time (in fact, all the subject above find a home in there somewhere).

I hope that this will become a place where meaningful interaction can take place, I hope too, as time goes on, to produce material which is readily ‘shareable’, but in the meantime, this is just to let you know that the site exists.

Did you like this post? Please leave your thoughts in the comments, and don’t forget to share it on your social media platforms – let’s take the power back.