Theogenesis: Acentric Theology

By Sylvester Steffen

Reduced to elemental terms, THEOGENESIS is about the universal dynamic of communication, consciousness, conscience and wisdom. These correlate to each other as cause and effect. The dynamic of evolution in enlarging wisdom is by way of TRIMORPHIC RESONANCE, the continued harmonizing of faith, hope and love, by way of communication, consciousness and conscience the process of Symbiotic Evolution.
If NOVOGENESIS is about communication, and METAGENESIS is about consciousness, and THEOGENESIS is about conscience, then CHRISTOGENESIS is about wisdom. And what is wisdom? It is Eucharistic Altruism, the intentional giving-over of self to other in interests of common wellbeing.
Ultimately, faith/ hope/ love come to Eucharistic Altruism. Evolutions trajectory (cogitata perficiendo, cogitando sic perfecta) is forward toward altruism, self-reflective CHRISTOGENESIS the intentional choosing to be sacrificial. This is the point and purpose, not just of Christianity, but of Natures Symbiotic Altruism, other-directed what is the authentic conscience of faith and reason, common to all authentic religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477213193

Sylvester Steffen

FROM THE AUTHOR How could anyone, except a naïve person, dare to take on medieval culture and Catholic history, but especially, a non-professional Roman Catholic lay person? When I chose the life work of reconciling faith and reason (back in 1957), I couldn't really know the magnitude of the challenge; thirteen books later is an indicator. "THEOGENESIS, Acentric Theology" book thirteen, is the last take on my faith journey. I come to this conclusion: the Roman Catholic Church is cemented in time with one foot planted in Medievalism and the other in Postmodernity. The church's dogmatic fixation in dualism, centrism and sexism is the medieval foot, the cosmology, philosophy and theology of the Councils of Trent and the First Vatican. The Second Vatican Council represents the step forward into Postmodernity. But, the medievalists still have a foot stoutly planted in medieval pietism. The last two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been collaborating (co-conspiring?) to frustrate Vatican II Liberation Theology in favor of commercial pietism. Totally out-of-balance, the church seems unable to move either foot, and the laity is utterly frustrated with a church that cannot find its way. The Wheel of History doesn't stop. Nor can people allow themselves to be dragged down by an out-of-touch church. As the Latin writer Lothair I says, “tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis” (times change and we change within them). And so it is. The POETREE Trilogies witness the changing times and how we are changing in them. A way of reconciliation and liberation is presented that keeps the best of history, but which is future oriented. Sylvester L Steffen

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© 2012 Sylvester Steffen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 6/14/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1321-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1320-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1319-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909875

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Foreword

The Quantum Impulse

Grace Supposes Nature

Programmable Dna And Green Religion

Religion Pure And Simple

Transformational Reality

Critical Thinking

Not So Pretty Parasol

Well Into The Past

Discerning Spirit

Jesus At Twelve

Straw Cloth

No Flight Of Fancy

The Red. The Green. The Purple. The Gold.

Whither My Self

Initiation Rites

Schizophrenia

Innocence

Tangled Wing

The Repressed Feminine

Temptation

Malady

Radical Clericalism

Soul-Searching

Self Doubt

Absurdity

Arrogance

Distressed Nature

Prostitution

Becoming

Violence

Sainted Land

Satanspeak

Birthright

Schooled To Fleece

Dear St. Augustine!

To Be Human

Debt Burden

Volcano Watcher

Servicing The Debt

Testing God

Right To Choose

Polarity

Economics

Heir To Err

Idolatry

Pious Pretense

Purchased

Daily Communion

Ritual Sacrament

Riley Vs. Fletcher

Mutually Endowed

Plasma-Brewing Space: Word-Made Flesh

No Hidden Agendum

Roots Of Violence

Return From The Edge

Book Keeper

What Is Truth?

What I Found

Inerrant Arrow

Demything

Eccentric Dogma

Natural Law

Out! Damned Thot!

Authoritarian

Quintessential Bureaucrat

Tattered Life

Imaging God

Easter Island

Salamander Intelligence

Trumpet At The Wall

Original Sin

Unmasked Deceit

Beyond Fideism

The Beached Barque

Adam’s Sin

Unsavory Salt

Agony

Masculinized God

Prudent Virgin

The Crystal Closet

Self-Righteous

1555: Rome/ Augsburg

At The Intersection

The Dusk Of Mankind

Last Request

Monoliths

Deity

Thank You, Ryan White

Redemption

Pregnant Thought

Hell

Heaven

Regrets

God Lives

Staying Chaos

Alpha/ Omega

Religious Sin

Trimorphic Protennoia

Faith Disabled

Busyness

Wreckless Business

Frustrated Voters

Usury

On The North Side

The Truth That Lasts

Evangelization In Context

Individually Talented

Easter Island Megaliths

Owl In The Evergreen

God: Imagined/ Imaged

Empowered Priesthood

God Of Abraham

The Temple Teacher

Middle Estate

Point Person

Apocalyptic Angels

Heresy

Terminal Insult

To Come In Glory

That Worry Word

Heartword Arrow Truth

Underside Theologian

The Transformational One

To Inherit The Earth

Betrayed

The Baptizer

In God We Trust

Easter Forever

Temple Violators

Priestly Call

Guilt

Atonement

Priesthood

Consecration

Quantum Mass

Whose Choice?

Maria

Soul Of Theology

As Peas In A Pod

The Tiller

Obstinance

Temple Prostitution

Aries’ Brain

Super Collider Skull

Religious War

Black Eye

Death By Exploitation

Milking Time

Common Grounding

The Inner Dimension

House Of God

The Culture Of Life

Source Of All Evil

Presumption

Dying Earth

Social Disintegration

Wheat As Word

En El Ojo De Dios

Peace

Off The Deep End

The Way We Are

Operation Rescue

Earth Theology

All Is Smal

Chernobyl

Blessed Are The Greedy

Living Lightly

Junk-Bond Babel

Promised Land

Soul-Healing

Tragic Choice

Criminal Justice

Contigent Environment

Earth’s Renewing Face

Facades

Candle Light

Godward

Alphabet Soup

David / Goliath

With Whom Wisdom?

Cogito, Ergo Sum

The Sin We’re In Is Too Big To Believe

Scandalizing The Innocents

Living Purposely

Transparency Vs. Duplicity

Gravity-Waves/ Conscious Connection

Free At Last

Self-Reflection

Dreamscape

The Rape Of Grass

Beyond Mummy Minds

Brain Child

Earth Word, Resound

Violent Culture

Fire-And-Ice Man

Hook And Eye

Witlessness Rejected

In Medias Res

Insulting Gene

Reflective Consciousness — A Power To Heal

Malevolence

Testosterone

Thunder Thieves

Higher Call

Due Credit

Friend Above Question

Apology

Graced Light

Sapientiusque Concupisco

A Rose Is A Rose

Liberated Spirit

Wisdom’s Edification

Wisdom Begins In Devout Regard For Parenthood.

Understanding Is Knowing The Sacred Unam/ Unum.

Retrospective

Signs And The Times

The Reasonableness Of Faith

Confession Is A Two-Way Street

Ecumenical Education

New Ecumenism

Divinely Maternal

Denial Of Evolution

Afterword

Life After-Word

Life After-Work

Epilogue.

Conclusion

The Root Lesson Of Acentric Theology:

Becoming Godlike — Being Word/Light/Love.

THEOGENESIS

CONSCIENCE-BASED LOVE

ACENTRIC THEOLOGY

THE POETREE TRILOGY

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2012 Edition

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THEOGENESIS

—God-Presence Birthing—

CHRISTOGENESIS is

Godlikeness-In-Process

=============================

The TRIMORPHIC RESONANCE

of

TRINITARIAN COMMUNITY

Informed Consciousness

Committed Conscience

================================

The METHOD of EVOLUTION

Cogitata perficiendo, cogitando sic perfecta

[perfecting thought by perfected thinking]

TRINITY-In-PROCESS — TRIMORPHIC RESONANCE

GOD IS A VERB * — MISSION IS A VERB *

*PROPHETIC DIALOGUE, Reflections on Christian Mission Today, Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, © 2011, ORBIS BOOKS, Maryknoll, New York 10545

The DIVINE / HUMAN QUARREL

Q. "My People, my Church, what are you doing to yourself? Your imagination is imprisoned in old fabrications that hold you dead in your tracks.

A. You are unmoving in the restraints You require nature to put on us. How can we not obey the fabrication in nature that requires all to die?

Q. "My arrow of compassion prods the frustration of staticism; the urgency of codependency exposes your pride and enlightens mindless division.

A. Division cuts through the entanglement of complexity; can anything but the obduracy of daring cut through the impenetrable tangle that contains us?

Q. "Though your ignorance, your obsessive arrogance and sexual self-alienation hold you back, they will not hold Me back.

A. You ask too much for our matter-imprisoned minds to grasp; daring alone enables unavoidable ignorance to cope with sexual impositions.

Q. "My World evolves, and so must you. My world expands, so must thinking. My World lives by the Three-ness of two-ness, female/ male. Be, as My Word.

A. No otherness is the same; how can otherness do the same when by its very nature otherness is different?

Q. Be, as My Word Is. Be transformed as My Spirit transforms. Expand your minds. Imagine and live moral lives. Love’s attraction overcomes artifices of deadness.

A. "How can I know the change Your Word intends? Will moral living answer all my objections and open to Love’s attraction beyond artifice and fabrication?....

I don’t hear Your Answer… so I will take Your Silence as a ‘Yes’.

PREFACE

COMMERCIAL PIETISM and FALLEN ORDER*

The challenge to every age and in all places is to discern the relationship of ecology/ Eucharist/ economy, for on this discernment depends the integrity by which people live moral lives and accommodate to the necessities of sustaining the ecology, honoring God and respecting each other. A study of history reveals the rise and fall of commercial pietism and the collapse of religious/ social/ ecological order from abuses of religious and civil culture.

Workable economics requires political restraint in accessing natural resources and using them in equitable and sustainable ways. In the correlation of equitable and sustainable is where convergence of religion, politics and culture happens, and moral sensitivity, in proportioning respect and balance in serving the needs of the people. The politics of reserve are called for in exemplifying and realizing a conservative sense of leadership, of people toward nature and the respectful interaction of people and leadership.

The convergences of patriarchal dominion, imperial hegemony and Christianity, set the stage for the rise of commercial pietism and eventual collapses of cultures, religions and ecologies. Contributing to fallen order are commercial abuses and the disrespectful exploitation of nature’s sexual gratuities. So, what is meant by commercial pietism?

The high period of medievalism exemplifies. In medieval times, popes were kings in equal standing with other kings in Europe. But popes held controlling advantage because their claim included supreme religious power within the kingdoms, which were Roman Catholic from the time of Constantine. The Knights Templar, the popes’ army, conscripted from the European kingdoms, overwhelmed European economies by incursions of evangelization wars in the Middle East, whose objectives proved to be totally unsustainable; nevertheless, remnant Orders of Knights continue to this day to exert influence in the Vatican in affairs of the Holy Land. Just recently Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore (now Cardinal) was named Pro-Grand Master of the Knights Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, a chivalric organization dedicated to promote and defend the Latin Patriarch. (The WITNESS, Dubuque, Iowa, Archdiocesan Weekly, 9/4/2011, pg. 14)

Pope Leo X, 1513-1521, (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici), from the longtime family of merchants and bankers, schemed to build the grand Vatican Basilica of St. Peter. To finance the building he authorized the sale of indulgences across Europe to raise money. Indulgences were simply promissory notes to be cashed in at the pearly gates, post mortem. The promised after-death return directly imposes on God to award eternal rewards for payment promised on earth. This promise scams God, nature and people, and authorizes abuses in God’s name.

The Genesis Story of The Fall, of wasted Eden, and of today’s global economic/ religious collapses are all the same story, the story of commercial pietism and fallen order. Corrupting the heart of religion is commercial pietism, taking money, promising prayer. It’s what Pope Leo X brought to a high art-form; it’s the sin expanded in colonialism, in commercial capitalism. It’s the sin that drives wars of religion. It’s the sin of institutional religion. It enslaves conscience, degrades nature and self-respect. It corrupts interpersonal relationships; it corrupts education that projects it perpetually, generation after generation.

Money used corruptly victimizes. If we could be free from money’s enticement to put ourselves ahead of others, we might discover true conscience and the freedom of the children of God. It is not unusual that religions still curry favor where the money is. So, how can religion rise above commercial pietism? By decentralizing dominion culture and respecting the equal standing of all people.

The culture of Eucharistic Altruism obliges all equally at all levels of society and culture. In the Sacrament of Natural Order all people commune with God and are Eucharist to one another. The People Church should be just that, locally joined communities globally responsible for nature and functioning as church to one another, universally political, and acentrally distributed. Take money out of religion and what is left? Conscience; and that is not all bad. It is not my point here to condemn money rather it is my point to not be collectively guilty of idolatry, of making money our god.

* Karen Liebreich, FALLEN ORDER, INTRIGUE, HERESY, AND SCANDAL IN THE ROME OF GALILEO AND CARAVAGGIO, © 2004, Grove Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Order-Intrigue-Scandal-Caravaggio/dp/0802142206

CHRISTOGENESIS vs. MEDIEVALISM

CHRISTOGENESIS

is Other-Sensitivity evolving in Cosmic Consciousness.

MEDIEVALISM is Counter-Reformationalism

fixated in the Councils of Trent and Vatican I.

CHISTOGENESIS and MEDIEVALISM are antithetical to each other.

MEDIEVALISM is fixation in death, backward looking.

CHRISTOGENESIS is openness to life, forward looking,

The Vision of The SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL.

__________________

CHOOSE LIFE — NOT DEATH

Introduction

PEOPLE — WE ARE IN DIVINE LIKENESS Trimorphic Resonance in Community.

Called to Faith, Hope and Love.

Called to live Mission with integrity.

Theology is the altruism of intentional self-awareness searching for Godly understanding and Godlike living. Theological understanding evolves from within self-expressive nature, in which self-expression evolves and witnesses the unity and continuity of all existence from common beginnings. Reflection on being (ontology) identifies first with cosmic being/ becoming. The trademark energy (spirituality) of cosmic-originated transformation is intimately present in every