Latest Blog Entries

The recent shooting at a back-to-school mass in Minnesota has many people asking: Where was God? A gunman killed two children and injured eighteen others at Annunciation Catholic Church. In response, there’s a renewed call for gun reform and a dialogue about how to prevent future shootings. Many also wonder why an allegedly omnipotent God […]

Augustine’s beliefs about God and time have been highly influential in Western civilization, especially among Christians. Scholars often cite his beliefs about divine immutability and impassibility. But Augustine’s belief in a timeless God and waffling about the reality of time powerfully shaped the history of theology. The Confessions may be the most influential book from […]

It’s obvious to many believers that God is personal, relational, and experiences emotions. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptures routinely describe deity in this way.[1] These abilities and attributes also seem required if the Spirit is loving, because lovers are persons who act and feel in relationships. It makes sense, therefore, for this systematic theology of […]

I enjoyed watching the recent Shiny Happy People documentary on Ron Luce and Teen Mania. The series conclusion disappointed me, however. I think producers missed an opportunity to explore a theological claim that could have motivated Ron Luce more than his concern for teen culture or politics. A Teenage Holy War The Amazon Prime, three-part […]

In my systematic theology of love, I argue that believers should reject the idea God is omnipotent. They should embrace the notion that God’s power is uncontrolliong love. I call this “amipotence:” ami=love; potence=power. The amipotent view stands between two adjacent concepts of divine power. SECOND ALTERNATIVE TO AMIPOTENCE One concept says God’s power is […]

In a recently published Substack essay, I looked at arguments for and against saying God is a being. I propose a new way to think about God I call “gino-theology.” In that Substack essay, I argued that we best think of God as an everlastingly becoming Spirit. That’s gino-theology. By “becoming,” I mean the Spirit […]

I was recently invited by the Center for Christogenesis to give a paper. (Thanks, Ilia Delio, Robert Nicastro, and team!) It was part of the Center’s “Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science” online conference. Given the invitation, I took the opportunity to reflect on what precisely I’d like to see changed in religion. And […]

(This is chapter four of my systematic theology of love in progress. I’d love to get your suggestions on how the chapter might be improved. That might include suggestion citations, ideas, grammar changes, and more. Paid subscribers will get a signed copy of the published book and will be mentioned in the book’s acknowledgments. Click […]

I’m writing a systematic theology. As a small part of the task, I’m comparing and contrasting my view of God with other systematic theologies. Most theologies prioritize a different list of divine attributes than what I prioritize. A common way to prioritize one or some divine attributes identifies those the theologian thinks are essential to […]

In my last blog post (“Reasons to Think God Exists”), I noted atypical reasons to believe God might exist. Those reasons come after a yet-to-be-published discussion of traditional reasons people think God exists. Those typical arguments appeal to design, first cause, morality, religious experiences, and so on. In that as-of-yet-unpublished discussion, I also address reasons […]