Latest Blog Entries

I recently gave a lecture in Vancouver, BC at an event co-hosted by Vancouver School of Theology and St. Andrews Wesley United Church. In my lecture, I explored seven obstacles to love and how we might overcome them. My book, Pluriform Love, provided the details for my arguments. Of the 25+ books I’ve written or […]

In various publications and recently in Pluriform Love, I define love. My definition says love acts intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. Perhaps the most common alternative to my definition says love is desire. We find theologians and philosophers from the past and present defining love as desire. In […]

Many biblical scholars and theologians fail to affirm the priority of love. In this essay, I focus on the final of five reasons why many fail to make love a priority. I’ll simply list the first four before addressing the fifth. Get a copy of Pluriform Love to read the explanations I give to the […]

Most Christian theologies restrict divine love. According to many, God only expresses agape. According to others, God only expresses eros. Some theologies may say God expresses hesed but cannot affirm divine ahavah. Other theologians mix and match love, depending on their philosophical and theological assumptions. In my new book, Pluriform Love, I argue that God […]

I’ve written a book that ties together many of my primary thoughts about God and love. It’s called Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being. The preface of Pluriform Love gives the background story to its writing. And it provides a taste of some of the book’s primary ideas. I thought I’d share […]

I think about love every day. As a Christian, l think love is the center of who God is and what God calls of me and others. As I see it, Jesus reveals love most fully. I also think love is pluriform. It’s not just helping the helpless, as important as that is. It’s not just […]

Philosophy always plays a role in Christian theology. This isn’t a bad thing; philosophy isn’t inherently evil. We’re all philosophers, in the general sense of thinking about things, and all theologies have philosophical assumptions. In fact, every statement about love – scholarly or not – incorporates philosophy, at least in the broad sense. Some philosophies […]

An adequate Christian theology of love offers a plausible solution to the problem of evil. Rather than appealing to mystery, it offers answers to the issue most atheists say prevents them from believing God exists.[1] Those answers also help theists make sense of God’s love in light of personal, systemic, and nonhuman evils. In my […]

In my forthcoming book, Pluriform Love, I propose a new theological category: Essential Hesed. In this essay, I offer an excerpt from the book. Much precedes this and much comes after. But I offer this as a taste of what Essential Hesed says… God’s Steadfast Love Is God’s covenantal, loyal, and steadfast love for creation […]

I’m excited about my book, Pluriform Love, which is coming out in February! It’s an academic book. I think of it as a follow-up to my book, The Uncontrolling Love of God. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter… The Primacy of Love It’s not hard to make a scriptural case for the primacy of […]