Participatory God

Contextual Quote

"Whitehead says the power of God is the worship that God inspires, pointing out how God needs us to be powerful. This divine function would be a potential object (and subject—not just a what but a who) of worship, but a worship recognizing how deeply participatory divine action is. Process theology can help orient any major religion. It doesn’t project the divine beyond us but recognizes that if the divine is to be realized as a real ingredient in the world-process, it's because we live up to that ideal ourselves, because we incarnate it. As Whitehead says, “the world lives by its incarnation of God in itself.”

This isn't a God who will come rescue us. As someone compelled by the Christian mythos and the history of Christianity, I believe the rescue mission—the deed of Jesus—already occurred. If there's a “second coming,” it will be through us as a spiritual community of human beings. God is now in the universe, integral with the Earth and humanity. God isn't somewhere else. There's no more rescue mission that won't be driven by us. It has already happened."

- Matthew Segall [1]