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God Can’t Intro

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My new book, God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils will be released in January!

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The Justice of Love

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The 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions will be held November 1-7, in Toronto. I’m especially excited about the Parliament theme: “The Promise of Inclusion, the Power of Love: Pursuing Global Understand, Reconciliation, and Change.” With such a grand title, it’s not surprising representatives […]

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Relentless Love in the Afterlife

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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 […]

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Those Who Love Work With God

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The idea God needs our cooperation is more common in the Bible than most realize. Because many assume God can accomplish tasks and establish relationships alone, they overlook it. But sometimes translators are to blame. Romans 8:28 is a great example of translator decisions that hide the […]

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What Does God’s Love Do?

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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 […]

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Does God Have Emotions?

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Some Christians believe God has no emotions. They believe this, in part, because they think only embodied beings have the capacity to express emotions. I think God can experience and express emotion. In a series of previous blog essays, I've argued that God is relational. By that I mean God gives […]

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God’s Love is Relational in Three Forms

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The theo-logic of God's love says divine love is relationally full-orbed rather than one-dimensional. Three forms of love -- agape, eros, and philia -- demonstrate this theo-logic. And the Bible gives witness to them. AGAPE God expresses the agape form of love by responding to sin with forgiveness […]

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The Theo-Logic of Love (and why Aquinas and Anselm are wrong)

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In contrast to Aquinas and Anselm, I think God’s love involves more than outgoing benevolence. God’s love also involves incoming empathy, receiving, and sometimes suffering.

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Does the Bible Say God Controls?

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I’ve been in conversation lately with people thinking through my theology of God’s uncontrolling love. Many like my view that God cannot control others. But they think the biblical writers say God sometimes controls. Two examples of God’s alleged control often arise in our conversations. Both are […]

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Revolutionary Love

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We need a revolution. Actually, we need revolutions (plural). The status quo must be overcome. I don't pretend to think we will all agree upon the precise strategies that might best overcome destructive ways of living. Nor do I think we will all agree about which dimensions of life, structures of […]

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About

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books and professor at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho.

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