Most Christian theologies assume God is essentially timeless. This timeless God foreordains or foreknows all that will ever occur. For these theologies, “divine providence” means God acting with the end already settled. Open and relational theology thinks God is timefull, not timeless. How we think about God’s relation to time makes a big difference in […]

“Who is God?” Is there a question more difficult to answer? And is anyone more foolish than the one who thinks she can give a full and wholly accurate answer? In this brief essay, I will tread where angels fear to tread: I talk about God’s nature. I don’t pretend to offer a full or […]

Many thoughtful believers wonder how best to talk both about God’s steadfast stability and relational flexibility. Unfortunately, even some of the best thinkers end up sacrificing one to affirm the other. Unchangingly Perfect For much of  history, trained theologians in the Abrahamic faiths have sacrificed God’s relational flexibility in their desire to emphasize God’s stability. […]

In the book I’m currently writing, I address the question of heaven, hell, annihilation, and the afterlife. I take the logic of uncontrolling love to its eschatological end. And this process has led me to coin a label for my view, Relentless Love. The Usual Afterlife Theories The logic of uncontrolling love changes the way […]

If God’s love is uncontrolling, what does it actually do? Is God involved in our lives? Or is God like an object that inspires without directly affecting us? Something else? In a recent International Journal of Systematic Theology article, Kevin Vanhoozer offers a dialogue between John Webster’s views of love and my own. Kevin wonders […]

In a recent International Journal of Systematic Theology article, Kevin Vanhoozer offered a dialogue between John Webster’s views of love and my own. In one section, he wonders if my view of God’s uncontrolling love accounts for miracles, including the biblical claim that “even the wind and waves obey” Jesus. I think it does. Vanhoozer […]

Many Christians think God voluntarily chooses to love and relate with us, even though God could choose not to do so. I disagree. In this essay, I ask three diagnostic questions I think show that most Christians actually believe God must love and relate with us, even though they may say otherwise. In a series of previous […]

In my recent book, God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils, I address the topic of healing.  I’m not only interested in explaining how healing works. I’m also interested in explaining why many are NOT healed. To conclude one chapter, I summarized my main points. I provide […]

It seems that most Christians believe God is relational. I agree. Theologians call this “divine passibility.” But some Christians think God chooses to be relational, while others think God is relational by nature. Does it matter whether we believe God is relational by choice or by nature? Five Reasons to Affirm God is Essentially Relational […]

An increasing number of Christians believe God is relational. To be “relational” is, in the classical language, to be “passible.” It means that God is affected by others. I’ve written an essay for a new book on im/passibility, and I defend what the editors call “strong passibility.” In my language, I call this God’s essential […]