Tom Oord's "Defining Love" and "The Nature of Love" -- A Review

DEFINING LOVE: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement. By Thomas Jay Oord. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2010. Xiii +225 pages. THE NATURE OF LOVE: A Theology. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2010. Xii +195 pages.

Christians talk a lot about love. We affirm that God is love. We say that God loves the world enough to send into the world his Son. We treasure the words of 1 Corinthians 13, with its suggestion that while faith and hope will abide, the greatest is love. We even sing, perhaps with an uneasy conscience, “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” But, what do we mean when we talk about love? What is our definition? How do we know to discern whether someone is acting in love? In fact, where does love come from? All of these questions are raised and addressed in these two similar, but different, books authored by Nazarene theologian Thomas Jay Oord.

Tom Oord, who is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University and a Ph.D. graduate of Claremont Graduate University, has an agenda. He wants to move beyond simply putting love on the theological discussion table to placing love at the very center of theology. If God not only loves, but is love, then love should be “organizing principle” of theology. Unfortunately, in Oord’s mind, this has not happened. Too often it remains behind Oz’s curtain, but “only when placed at the center can the logic of love explicitly extend to all aspects of Christian theology” (Nature, p. 4).

Oord’s agenda, it would seem, requires too very different but related books. Defining Love is in many ways the foundational text. It provides the broader outlines for placing love at the center of theological reflection, but looking at love from philosophical and scientific angles as well as theological ones. In this challenging and at times dense book Oord lays out a new field of scholarship, what he calls the “love, science, and theology symbiosis” (Defining, p. 5). In this context Oord is advocating a program of “love research,” that has at its core the belief that it is possible for the world and individuals can get better. He wants to find ways in which we can discern the virtues and practices that will enable this to happen. In other words, love just doesn’t’ happen. It requires nurture and promotion and development. This requires research into the nature of love and how it is best expressed. With this in mind, Oord lays out his understandings of science and theology, trying to clearly define where they are different and where they relate to each other.

Essential to this program is to have a firm definition of love, one that can provide a foundation for research and theological reflection. The definition that he formulates provides the basis for discussion in both of these books. That basic definition reads as follows:

To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being (Defining, p. 15).

With this basic definition in mind, Oord proceeds to explore the diverse forms of love, for not all forms of love are alike, even if they have at their base the same purpose – “promotion of overall well-being.” Thus, he looks at agape, philia, and eros. While making use of theology here, he is more intent on exploring the input of philosophy to the discussion.

Moving from definitions, Oord brings to bear the “qualitative and quantitative” insights of the social sciences, including both psychology and sociology. Key to this discussion are concepts such as altruism and empathy, along with personality types and motives. He concludes that from examining research there is a clear move away from the idea that humans are by nature “inevitably and invariably egoistic” (Defining, p. 96). If the social sciences provide one vantage point, what about biology. Assuming that evolution is true, the question concerns how evolutionary development provides the conditions for love. Again the focus is on altruism, and whether there is evidence from the study of nature of self-sacrificial action. Although the explorations are still at their early stages, the key question, concerns the evidence that nonhuman creatures express love. This may still be speculative, but there is interesting evidence to pursue. Turning from biology to cosmology, with its discussions of the formation of the universe, including the principle of creatio ex nihilo, the issue here in part concerns the possibilities of divine engagement with the universe. This is a key question for we must wrestle with the way in which God might engage us. Does God have either the power or the will to change or affect in dramatic ways nature? Or does God work in a very different fashion? Here Oord, who can be considered part of the Open Theism movement, interacts with a variety of theological and biblical perspectives, including Process Theology, which he respects but doesn’t embrace completely. The point of the chapter isn’t to provide a final understanding but to lay out the parameters and possibilities for study. Finally, he reaches theology, where he expresses his hope for a partnership between the sciences and theology so that love can find its place at the center of theology.

If Defining Love has a scientific/philosophical focus, The Nature of Love focuses on theology itself. Of the two books, this is probably the easier read and may be for many the most appropriate place to start. Although no mention is made of Defining Love many of the ideas and foundations transfer from one book to the other (I’m not sure which book was written first, though from the reader's perspective Defining Love could be considered the foundational book).

In Nature of Love Oord begins with the same definition of love as in the first book, with a focus on intentionality and end result – promotion of well-being. Whereas in the first book his conversation partners are the sciences and philosophy, here they are theologians. He wrestles with Anders Nygren over agape, St. Augustine over eros, and Clark Pinnock over philia. He finds something of value in each of these theologians and their particular definitions and perspectives on love, but he also finds them to be deficient at important points. Of the three foci, I found the engagements with Nygren and Augustine the most pertinent. In both cases, Oord redefines in important ways how we understand love.

In regard to Nygren and Nygren’s claim that agape is the definitive form of Christian love, to the exclusion of other forms, Oord challenges the idea that we are simply conduits of a love that comes from God alone without any human engagement. In his view, agape should be understood as “in spite of love.” That is, agape is that form of love that intentionally seeks to promote the well-being of the other despite the fact that the other means us harm or evil. God is definitely involved, but that doesn’t mean that we have not part to play. With regard to eros, which Augustine saw as a deficient form of love, for Augustine believed that only God could truly love, and that the object of love has no value in and of itself. Oord defines eros as being “because of love,” by which God and we seek to promote overall well-being by affirming and promoting the value that is inherent in the other. This is, I believe an important step, for too often theology starts with the premise that we are some how “totally depraved” and thus having no inherent worth or value. If Oord is correct, then we must think differently, and that means that we act differently with regard to the other. Finally, he deals with philia, and in this regard looks to his late colleague Clark Pinnock with whom he has much in common, but with whom he has what might seem to be minor differences, but which have important implications. Philia is by definition the promotion of well-being by “coming alongside.” It is that friendship, community oriented form of love, which reminds us that we need each other. It speaks of cooperation with God and with one another. Where he differs from Pinnock is in Pinnock’s concern to protect God’s reputation.

In the final chapter of The Nature of Love, Oord offers his own theological program, which he calls “essential kenosis.” This program serves as the context in which love can be brought into the center. There are similarities to Process Theology, though through the use of the idea of kenosis (self-emptying), he hopes to distinguish from his own idea of a self-limiting God with that of an inherently limited divinity, but in this understanding self-limitation isn’t voluntary, it is essential to God’s nature. What he wants the reader to understand is that God’s love is a question of necessity. Whereas in other forms of kenosis theology, God need not love outside the Trinity, in his understanding God of necessity loves the Creation. Love is not contingent. It is part of God’s nature. External forces don’t limit God, but God’s nature does. Therefore, God cannot but love.

So the question is – what does it mean for God to love, and here it’s important that all three forms of love are brought into the equation. The kind of love that forms the center of theology – our understanding of God – must be “full-orbed.” We make a mistake when we think that we can settle on one form of love and define that as Christian or divine love. We must instead bring agape, eros, and philia into our definition. If this is true of God, then it is also true for us, who are called upon as God’s creation to imitate God by expressing this full-orbed love of God in our lives. I should add that in Oord’s understanding love means that God is not coercive in any way. Thus, even creation is not a coercive act, but requires the participation of the other for creation to occur. You can see the similarities to Process Theology. The borders the two are a bit fuzzy, but there is enough of a difference to keep these two as separate understandings of the nature and purpose of God.

I believe that Tom Oord is on to something important. I have found his definitions of love to be not only helpful but have provided a new orientation for understanding the unconditional nature of love, and the full-orbed nature of love. I believe his definitions are far superior to any others I’ve seen. Thus, as a pastor and a preacher, who believes that God not only loves, but is love, these definitions and the research that help sustain these definitions will help the church move forward into the future. It will assist us in moving away from self-centeredness to others-centeredness. It will help us reorient the way we do theology and understand God and God’s relationship to Creation.

Of the two books, The Nature of Love is the easiest to work with and may be the most helpful, but for those who wish to dig deeper into the project, then Defining Love is an important read. Both are well written, but neither of these books are quick reads. They require diligent engagement and reflection. That said, Tom Oord is on to something important that the church needs to hear.

The Adjustment Bureau, Rick Warren, and Process Theology (Bruce Epperly)

Out this past weekend was the latest Matt Damon movie -- The Adjustment Bureau.  I've yet to see it, but Bruce Epperly, a regular contributor to this blog did see it and offers his thoughts from a theological perspective on the movie's message on the fate of humanity, comparing it to Rick Warren's rather deterministic Purpose Driven Life and the more open vision of Process Theology.  I think you'll find this essay intriguing and thought provoking. 

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The Adjustment Bureau, Rick Warren,

and Process Theology

Bruce G. Epperly

The Adjustment Bureau raises issues of God’s plan, destiny, choice, and chance. Rising political star David Norris is destined, yes destined, to become the President of the United States, until a chance encounter with dancer, Elise Sellas. This apparently chance encounter leads to an intricate struggle between the angelic case workers assigned to keep him on the Chairman’s (aka God) pre-established plan and the love struck Norris, who believes that he can choose his own destiny.

The Chairman’s plan takes a page right out of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life. According to the movie, God chooses the important events of our lives, steering us toward the course God has determined that will be best for us and the planet. We think we are free, when are really actors performing the script God has already written for us. The death of Norris’ parents and his brother is not accidental, but the working out of the Chairman’s plan to give Norris the hunger for political greatness, thus fulfilling his father’s dream.

Rick Warren’s image of human destiny takes a similar path in making the following affirmations about the relationship between God’s plan and human decision-making.

• God plans all the important events (genetics, gender, talents, family of origin) in our lives without our input.
• Every experience, including traumatic events, such as cancer, abuse, the death of a child, or tsunami, is “father filtered,” or planned by God for our growth.  
• In every event God is testing our fidelity to God’s sovereign decision-making. 
• God “smiles” when we follow directions and do as “he” says. 
• God wants us to “color inside the lines.” Coloring “outside the lines” leads to meaninglessness in this life and alienation from God (hell) in the next. Those who seek to thwart God’s plan will be punished.

Warren’s belief in divine destiny led one of my friends to describe his book as the “puppet driven life.” Both Warren and The Adjustment Bureau’s image of God’s plan assert that when it comes to the most important things, freedom and choice are an illusion. Happiness and fulfillment come from following the pre-established plan.

Now the Adjustment Bureau takes two slight diversions from Warren’s spiritual determinism. Within the Chairman’s plan, chance events occur. Norris meets Sellas and the pre-established plan for his life is jeopardized. Second, the movie suggests that God can scrap certain plans in favor of others, and open the doors to choice in rare circumstances. Although neither Norris nor Sellas is aware of it, the Chairman’s plan had once included them falling in love. That plan, however, was scrapped for greater things for each of them. Nevertheless, the energy of the Chairman’s negation unexpectedly draws them together.

For both theologians and lay people alike, divine choice and human freedom have often been pitted against one another. Either everything reflects divine decision-making or we are entirely free. Perhaps, there is another alternative that joins divine vision and decision-making, human freedom, environmental and genetic conditioning, and chance. This is the multi-faceted approach of process theology.

From the perspective of process theology, every event emerges from the intricate and dynamic interplay of God’s vision, environmental influences, genetics, and creaturely choice. In the dynamic interplay of life, accidents happen – cells reproduce in ways that lead to cancer, bridges collapse, and brakes fail. In this same interplay, human choices can lead to cancer, abuse, faulty construction, and genocide. God has not willed these events, but must, like us, live with these events, seeking to make the most out of difficult situations.

Process theology asserts that God is intimately involved in our lives, providing possibilities, inspirations, and intuitions; working through the interdependence of life to promote synchronous encounters; inviting us to use our limited freedom to create a just and beautiful world; and giving us strength and creativity to respond to personal and communal calamities. God is not in absolute control, nor do we create our own realities.

Still, God is constantly innovating, working within the world as it is to bring forth the right balance of order and novelty. Within the limitations of the many factors of life, humans are also constantly innovating, using our limited freedom moment by moment to choose our pathways. While creaturely freedom may be quite limited, given the influence of the past, environment, genetics, politics, economics, and divine influence, human choices made moment by moment can lead to life-changing expressions of creativity and beauty. Sadly, they can also lead to pain and suffering.

Life is a dynamic interplay of call and response in which God calls and we respond, and God calls again, adjusting God’s vision to our choices rather than forcing us to follow a pre-ordained script. Still, from the perspective of process theology, God provides many possibilities and opens the door to many vocations, or personal destinies. There is God’s vision for a particular moment in time but this vision is part of many broader visions, embodied over a lifetime. Moreover, process theology asserts that God’s vision is neither coercive nor competitive. God creates the context for maximal expressions of freedom and creativity, congruent with the well-being of the global and local communities. Freedom is limited, but it is real.

Like a good parent, God hopes we make the right decisions for ourselves and others. But, God also welcomes surprises. Contrary to Rick Warren and the Chairman’s initial plan, innovation leads to greater and more energetic revelations of God’s presence in our lives. After God has given us the most creative visions to integrate with our freedom and the impact of the environment, like a good parent, who has supplied crayons and paper for our recreation, God whispers in our unconscious, “Surprise me. Bring something new into the world. Do something beautiful and unexpected.”

The Adjustment Bureau provides much food for theological reflection. It invites us to ponder the intricacies of freedom and destiny and God’s role in determining who we are and what we do. It suggests that we may not be puppets of fate after all, and that our calling is to take risks for love, beauty, and healing. These risks rewarded with greater opportunities for freedom and creativity in partnership with the source of all freedom, creativity, and possibility.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (May 2011); and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

Circles and Safety -- Process and Parenting #3 (Bruce Epperly)

The third installment of Bruce Epperly's take on parenting from the perspective of Process Theology takes us to a place all parents have been.  He speaks to the question of safety and risk.  How do we protect our children while allowing them freedom to explore and grow.  He mentions a book that I read many evenings to my own son; it's a book that serves to remind the child that no matter where he or she runs, the parent is there.  Runaway Bunny is a favorite of parents and small children for it speaks to the kind of relationship we all envision.  It is, of course, also a relationship that God envisions for us to have with God.  I invite you to reflect and comment on Bruce's essay about drawing circles of safety around our children.

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Circles and Safety

Bruce G. Epperly

In the Celtic tradition, travelers often begin their daily journey with a prayer and the encircling (or “caim”) in which the traveler rotates in a clockwise direction, inscribing a circle with her or his index finger. Whether we do this through movement or in our imagination, the encircling reminds us that wherever we are, we are in God’s circle of protection. In the spirit of Romans 8, we discover that nothing – none of our deepest fears for ourselves or our loved ones – can separate us from the love of God. With the author of Psalm 139, we discover that if we descend to the depths, God is there; if we ascend to the heights, God is also there. Like the story of the Runaway Bunny, even when we run away, or clothe ourselves in darkness, God is there to embrace us.

I have found the practice of encircling to be a spiritual aid, especially when I find myself struggling with stressful situations or caught up in fear and anxiety. When I experience myself in God’s circle of love, I know that despite my fears that all will be well.

Being a parent can be frightening. We fear for our children’s safety and place in the world. We are constantly bombarded by news alerts and commercials that remind us, often unrealistically, that we, and our children, are always at risk. There are no guarantees in life, even for spiritual persons.

While parents can practice many common sense safety practices, the issue of safety is spiritual as well as practical. Parenting is about expanding the circle of our children’s experiences and this always involves risk. At five months, my grandson’s parents have 24/7 awareness of where he is and what he’s up to. They stay in contact with him by: being in the same room and through baby monitors. As he grows older, his circle of experience will grow to closing the door of his own room for privacy to playing alone in the backyard and to going on walks and bike rides with friends or all by himself. Eventually, he will go away to college, making a life of his own.

Parents and children alike need sufficient “primordial” or “basic trust,” enabling us to face uncertainty with confidence in our own abilities and the basic benevolence of the universe. Process theology sees trust as growing out of the dynamic divine-human relationship. God is involved in each moment of experience, providing possibilities and the energy to achieve them. God does not and cannot determine everything or provide an absolute safety net, but in every situation, God is providing resources for our well-being and safety, both in our experiences and by inspiring others toward acts of care and protection. We are always in the circle of God’s love and our calling is to create circles of love that expand to embrace others and that promote others’ creativity and freedom. This applies to parenting as well as to mentoring, marriage and friendship.

Parents need to join order and novelty in their parenting. Order describes the safe circles of life, of responsibility to protect our children with all the resources we can muster in terms of presence, household safety and security, diet, and health promotion. Novelty relates to allowing surprising and serendipitous moments to occur. These always involve a degree of risk. For example, in teaching my son to ride a bicycle 25 years ago, I put him at a small degree of risk as I pushed him forward and then let go so that he could ride on his own. He fell several times and then – voila! – Off he went, having learned to ride on his own without training wheels. The move from crawling to toddling and walking involves pain and failure; and yet it is necessary for growth and maturity. New ideas are threatening – and at times, painful – and yet without new idea, we stagnate intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.

As a parent and grandparent, I take the Celtic encircling seriously as essential to my intercessions on behalf of my son and grandson. I circle them in God’s care whether I am visiting them in Washington DC or taking a walk in my Lancaster, Pennsylvania neighborhood. The encircling reminds me that we are always connected and that my prayers make a difference. There are no guarantees in life – the sun shines and the rain falls on all of us. But, through the interplay of smart and safe parenting and a constant expanding of the circle of experience, we can balance safety and risk in ways that support our children’s well-being.

A Spiritual Practice for Parents: Regularly inscribe the Celtic circle (or “caim”) around your children and teach them to practice it as well. In your imagination, visualize yourself drawing a circle around your child as you pray for their safety, well-being, and creativity. Invite them to simply draw a circle around themselves by movement or in their imagination.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He has taught at Georgetown University, Wesley Theological Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, and Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is currently theologian in residence at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at bruceepperly@gmail.com

Parents and Playgrounds (Bruce Epperly)

Bruce Epperly returns for the second installment of his series on process theology and parenting, by looking at the way parents are present with children at the playground.  He raises the ever present question of how we balance safety and risk, so that children can soar.  There is a connection here between our own parenting skills and the way in which we envision God being present to and with us as parent.  I invite your reflections in response to Bruce's very provocative and helpful essay.

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Parents and Playgrounds

Bruce G. Epperly

When our son was small, the father of his best friend and I took the boys to the school playground every evening to ride their Hot Wheels three wheelers and play on the Jungle Gyms. My adult companion and I often engaged in animated conversations about literature and philosophy, but I always kept an eye on the boys. My task was to stay out of the way of their games and even some of their conflicts, to them let tumble and fall, but always be on the alert for real danger and run to the rescue if need be! The proof of my balance of distance and safekeeping is that both boys are still alive, married, and great friends.

Watching my infant grandson reminds me that good parenting involves intimacy and distance, order and chaos, safety and appropriate risk, immediacy and waiting an extra moment to intervene or respond to a cry. We parents feel our children’s pain, but good parenting involves appropriate distance so that children can learn self-reliance, patience, and problem-solving. Just recently my own son and his wife – and the grandparents, to a lesser extent – experienced this balance of intimacy and distance as they made the transition from their child sleeping in a co-bed in their room to him going to sleep in his own room. We all had to resist going in for a few moments to allow him to learn to soothe himself to sleep. (Of course, we did not leave him alone with his tears for too long!) This was tough since every cry broke our hearts.

Process theology sees life as a dynamic balance of order and novelty, and safety and risk. Disorder and pain are inevitable in a world in which there are many agents, each with her or his agenda. Not even God can control the outcome of every situation. As a matter of fact, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the parent of modern process thought, says that God’s vision, God’s action in any given situation, is the “best for that impasse.” Good parenting involves that right blend of order and predictability and innovation and surprise. In the evolving parent-child relationship, parents optimally encourage creativity and freedom appropriate to the child’s age. This isn’t always easy for either parent or child.

I recall the experience of encouraging our son to walk to school. Although most of the time, I drove him the circuitous route to his elementary school, I decided at one point that he should walk part way. We lived on a busy street so I always crossed the street with him. At the right time, we decided to experiment with walking to school. Over the course of a week, I gradually extended the circle of his freedom and agency – the first day, he just walked 50 feet by himself; the second day, 100 feet; the third day, the length of a football field. By the end of the week, he could walk the block and a half to school. Now, throughout this time, I always remained at the top of the hill watching him all the way to the school yard, always ready to sprint down the hill if I saw the slightest hint of danger. My son and I coined a phrase “I’ll watch you home” to describe any occasion where he was “on his own,” but I was there to provide the safety net, reassurance, or a virtual playground within which he could feel secure.

Parenting, like divinity, is about playgrounds and balancing safety, innovation, and risk. We hear a lot about “helicopter parents,” who even try to shape their children’s lives and insure their success in college. Such hyper-vigilance eventually makes a prison out of a playground, and prevents children from soaring on their own. Now, I belong to the “careful parents” and “careful grandparents” union! I am an intimate parent who still is involved at times as a coach and mentor, occasionally, an alternative voice in my own son’s life. (Of course, now that he is an adult, he gives me plenty of advice, too! And, he began to advise me on my clothes and public behavior nearly twenty years ago!) But, I realize that he is the ultimate decision maker now. I need to let go of being too good an advisor. My influence is in his bones and conscience, in his values and aspirations. My words are consultative, whether they relate to work or parenting, and given with a dash of humility since he now knows things and has expertise in some areas beyond my own. He is developing his own parenting style and his own way of navigating adult relationships; something we are always learning.

From a process perspective, there are many good ways of parenting, and good parenting is always situational and grounded in the relationship of the child’s experience and the parent’s gifts. Still, in the spirit of an evolving universe, good parenting – imitating the divine – is about expanding freedom and creativity and encouraging imagination and its embodiment in daily life. It is about nurturing a child’s own experience and uniqueness, mirroring God’s own movements in her or his life. It is about the intimacy of care and mentoring, and privacy of self-creation and growth. Imagine “all the places you’ll go.”

Today’s Spiritual Practice: Take some time to be still resting in the safety of the Universe. After breathing in a sense of peace, visualize your child or grandchild (or the child you are expecting). Imagine them as healthy, whole, and safe. Now, visualize them as growing in ability, resourcefulness, and courage. See them expand their circle of freedom. Imagine ways that you can encourage their freedom and creativity, while preserving their safety.

Today’s Affirmation: I nurture the right balance of safety and freedom in my child’s life.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; Reiki Healing Touch and the Way of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached for questions and engagements at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

Process and Parenting: Beauty and Breathing (Bruce Epperly)

Bruce Epperly returns with a new series of guest posts.  As a new grandfather, Bruce brings his theological foundations to the practice of parenting.  This is the first of four essays.  Enjoy!

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Process and Parenting:

Beauty and Breathing

Bruce G. Epperly

My recent adventures in grandparenting have inspired me to reflect on the role of parents as agents of creative transformation and growth in the lives of our children. While there are many pathways to creative and healthy parenting, I believe that the process-relational vision of life can provide parents with both practices and insights. These insights provide a context for the array of good materials on parenting, spiritual development, relationships, and healthy diet penned by psychologists, pediatricians, theologians, and holistic nutritionists.

Alfred North Whitehead once asserted that the aim of the universe is to bring forth beauty. John’s gospel captures this same insight in terms of Jesus’ affirmation that the goal of his ministry was abundant life. God wants us to live beautiful and abundant lives. That’s good counsel for parents – bring beauty into the lives of your children – and claim beauty for yourselves!

Perhaps, no human act shares in God’s activity as much as parenting. Just as God seeks the greatest good in every moment of experience, working with the many factors of life, so we humans in our role as parents are challenged to work within the many events of life – DNA, environment, and gifts and talents – both ours and our child’s. The question for parents is: how do we nurture beauty and abundant life in our role as parents? This is as much about us as our children!

Over the next few weeks, I will be reflecting on parenting from a process perspective, focusing on abundance, beauty, creativity and innovation, relationship, and character and courage. Children born in the twenty-first century, like my own grandson, will face a world of unprecedented change; indeed, they will face changes in planetary climate, the distribution of power, communication and medicine, and economics. The quest for beauty and abundant life will involve, in such circumstances, agility of spirit, the ability to initiate novelty – to make innovations – in response to the constant novelty of 21st century life. This will be, as Whitehead suggests, not just a matter of living – of sustaining life – but living well and living better. Today’s children will need to balance the global and local as they discover that individual well-being must include the well-being of the whole planet and the communities of which they are a part.

Today, I just begin with a simple affirmation: As a parent, I seek to nurture beauty of experience for my child, myself and significant others, and for other children. Beauty has many definitions, but it involves a dynamic interplay of unity and diversity, contrast rather polarization, plurality rather than monotony. As a parent, I seek to create from which our ability to experience beauty emerges – and that is simply trust in the goodness of life. Process theology affirms that God is present in every encounter, seeking the highest good in every situation. As parents, we seek to embody the same values: providing enough vision, support, and safety for a child’s exploration. Just as God provides spiritual nurture and overall consistency to the universe, we parents seek to join order and novelty as the basis for beauty of experience.

Order involves providing a basic safety net, a sense of security that enables a child to feel comfortable with her or his explorations. With infants this means an immediacy of love, care, and nurture. It involves parents cultivating patience as well as endurance to respond to midnight feedings, tears and fears, and the constant need for attention, especially in the first months of life. In many ways, parents and caregivers need to be omnipresent at life’s beginnings, responding immediately to every need, and only later cultivating a creative distance which allows the infant to grow in her or his own patience and ability to wait for gratification and others’ responses. The quest for beauty and personal growth involves nurturing freedom and creativity in the context of safety and every expanding circles of order.

As parents, we are challenged to see the world with eyes of wonder – to have the beginner’s mind just as an infant does, seeing the world and our child as if for the first time. With infants, every moment is a “thin place” – a place of holiness – as they encounter the world and parents are invited to share in this moment by moment novelty. This isn’t an easy task, because we have already established our own ways of orienting the world. But, the coming of an infant calls us to spiritual growth in which we learn to live moment by moment - in this now, considering the lilies as well as our child’s next breath.

Parenting truly is a spiritual discipline – it involves vision, patience, and self-care. Self-care almost seems impossible to new parents; but parents who realize that “it takes a village” will call upon grandparents, close friends, and occasionally paid companions in the first weeks of a baby’s life just to get a moment of self-nurture, rest, and prayer. Parenting involves an expansion of care – of altruism – such that the well-being of my child is as important as my own. I suspect that this is both a matter of nature – of the deeply-rooted desire to preserve the species – as nurture – the cultivation of practices of love, patience, and wholeness. We can’t control a child’s crying initially, but – as Viktor Frankl suggests – we have freedom in our response.

A Spiritual Practice for Parenting: The easiest spiritual practice for mothers and fathers is simply breathing. We can breathe intentionally, opening to the calming resources of the universe. We can see our breath as a way of connecting with our highest wisdom and calm, our insights. Breath inspires and connects with greater wisdom and peace. Breath enables us to be more patient and awakens our own energy when we are fatigued. It centers us so that we can provide a healthy center for our child. So, begin the day with conscious breathing and take a deep holy breath whenever you become stressed or impatient with your child.

Beauty and breathing are today’s words for process parenting along with opening to the resources of your community for your self-care and the care of your child.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; Reiki Healing Touch and the Way of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached for questions and engagements at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

 

The Pivot Point in the Biblical Drama: A Question for Ron Allen

On Saturday, at our 1st annual Perry Gresham Bible Lecture, Ron Allen, Professor of  Preaching and New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary (author of Life of Jesus for Today, WJK, 2008), laid out a scenario of a biblical drama that begins in Eden, moves to the Fall and then envisions a New Kingdom Age.  As Ron laid out this view of the biblical drama he noted that the biblical writers envisioned Jesus being the pivot point where the New Age intersects with the Old Age -- which leads to an age in between where both old and new exist together -- an age of conflict of values.

John, who is a member of the church and a frequent commenter here, raised a question with Ron concerning the point at which Jesus fits in as pivot point.  His question was:  

"What moment is the pivot point in history in this four-epoch scenario. Ron posited four points in Jesus life, and then declined to choose: birth, baptism, death, resurrection."

Ron has offered his response here:

We should take two matters into account in responding to the excellent issues John raises.

First, as John notes, the writers in the Gospels and Letters envision different moments in connection with the life of Jesus as the pivot moments in the transition from the Old Age to the New. For Paul, the transition occurs at the cross and the resurrection. For Mark, the baptism of Jesus is the hinge of history. For Matthew and Luke, the pivot is the birth of Jesus. The Fourth Gospel does not operate with the old age/new age view of history but sees the incarnation (when the Word, Jesus, becomes flesh) as the decisive moment that begins the revelation of God in Jesus for the sake of those who live in “the world.”

From the point of view of contemporary scholarship, these  viewpoints are different. Nevertheless, the church has effectively agreed with John (your learned parishioner, not the gospel writer) that Matthew and Luke take priority. We can see this with particular clarity in the creeds which begin their affirmations about Jesus by speaking about his birth.

Second, and I did not get into this at CWCC because of a shortage of time, there is a bigger theological question raised both by the presence of the Fourth Gospel and by occasional theological reflections over the history of the church. This question is whether we should view the world and God’s relationship to it from the perspective of the old age/new age scenario. To get immediately to the heart of the matter, the question is whether that scenario is completely true to real life experience. If the old age/new age typology is completely true, then we would expect the experience of life to be qualitatively different in the two ages. However, many Christians today think that the actual phenomena in the world are much the same both before and after Jesus. The good things are still good in about the same amount and degree and the bad things are still bad. In the language of philosophy, there is no phenomenological difference between the time before and after Christ.

The presence of the Fourth Gospel indicates that some in the early church did not find the old age/new age way of thinking to be satisfactory. To be honest, I do not find either the old age/new age or the heaven/world ways of understanding existence to be true to my experience of the world today. As I said several times in the seminar, I am not an end-time thinker myself as I think the end-time viewpoint is a surface way of thinking. The deeper point of the end-time theology, I believe, is to indicate that God is dissatisfied with the way things are and is at work to help the world better embody God’s loving purposes. I side with the process theologians in believing that life is an ongoing process and that God is ever loving presence to offer us the highest possibilities that are available within each circumstance. For Christians, Jesus is God’s agent and lure towards those possibilities.

Why Progressive Christian Theology Matters: The Primacy of Love (Bruce Epperly)

As we wander through these summer months, Bruce Epperly is drawing out attention to the question of whether and why progressive theology actually matters.  In today's piece he reminds us that the basic theological confession about God is that God is Love.  It is something, he says, we too easily forget in our quick embrace of God's power.  I invite you to ponder this question -- what is the primacy of love?  How does focusing on love change the way we envision God? 

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Why Progressive Christian Theology Matters:

The Primacy of Love

Bruce Epperly

In his latest book, The Nature of Love (Chalice Press), open and relational theologian Thomas Jay Oord asserts that “if love is at the center of the biblical witness and the core of Christian theology, it should be the primary criterion for theology.” Yet, as Oord notes, “those who write Christian theologies have often not placed love and its implications at the center of their work.”

Theologians have often forgotten that the proposition “God is love” is the primary description of God’s nature. In contrast, many theologians are willing to jettison love rather than power when it comes to describing what is most central to God’s nature. To compromise on divine power is unacceptable even if this means God is responsible for tsunami and earthquake; while compromising on God’s love for broken and wayward people seems in line with orthodoxy. When power becomes definitive of God’s nature, justice is, then, viewed primarily in terms of punishment rather than healing and transformation and divine knowledge is described as controlling rather than freeing and supportive.

Progressive theology affirms “a metaphysic of love” (Charles Hartshorne) in which God’s power is defined as relational and healing rather than unilateral and coercive. One of my teachers Bernard Loomer spoke of two kinds of power: relational and unilateral. Unilateral power is, by definition, coercive; it controls and shapes, but does not receive. The goal of unilateral power is to exert as much influence as possible without being influenced by others. It speaks but does not listen; it creates but does not respond; it demands but does not negotiate. Uninterested in the unique experiences of others (its subjects), it desires conformity and obedience, rather than creativity and adventure. One of the worse things that can happen, from the perspective of coercive power, is for God to be surprised or influenced by creatures like us.

In contrast, relational power is responsive as well as creative; it welcomes the influence of others. It embraces the gifts of creation and encourages freedom and creativity. It embraces surprise as the opportunity to exert its own freedom in novel and innovative ways. My teachers John Cobb and David Griffin describe God’s power as “creative-responsive love.”

When power is defined in terms of love, its primary goal is healing and transformation. God’s power is, as Peter Schmiechen describes it, entirely “saving power.” God is on our side, forgiving even the faithless and violent as a means of their healing. Loving power, however, is not weakness: it is persistent and challenging of alienating behaviors. As I Corinthians 13 proclaims, loving power never ends.

Loving power is reflected in Jesus’ approach to healing and wholeness. The healing narratives reflect Jesus’ affirmation that his mission was to promote abundant life. Jesus did not blame the victim, nor did he identify disease with divine punishment. While Jesus recognized that behaviors and attitudes could play a role in disease, even those who struggled with their faith or previous misdeeds received his blessing.

Loving power is reflected in Philippians 2:5-11. Here God’s power is revealed in presence and relationship. Every knee shall bow – yes, every knee! – not out of fear but out of gratitude for a love that knows no end and that rules by letting go rather than demanding obedience. Often love is seen as something weak by those who see power as definitive of God; they want a God who can rain down hell-fire and brimstone and punish the opponent. Often they exhibit this same behavior in relationship to their opponents, drawing lines that divide rather than circles that include. Love is powerful; it is willing to go to the cross to bring wholeness to humanity; it is willing to forgive the enemy; and it is willing to become “unclean” so that others find healing.

Today, in this time of cultural and religious polarization, we need to emphasize the love of God and the embrace of otherness, rather than denunciation and division. Only the vision of a truly loving God, for whom love is the primary motivation in the use of power, can help us find a spiritual and cultural common ground. As progressives, we need to let the light of love shine, as we tell the good news of an infinitely creative, adventurous, persistent, and loving God.

Bruce Epperly is Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Continuing Education at Lancaster Theological Seminary and co-pastor of Disciples Community Church in Lancaster, PA. He is the author of seventeen books, including  Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. Those interested in his work on healing may consult God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus   and Healing Worship: Purpose and Practice. His most recent book, From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Music and Worship in the Small Church written with Daryl Hollinger, will be released by Alban Institute Books in August.

Theology for a Troubled Believer -- Review

THEOLOGY FOR A TROUBLED BELIEVER: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. By Diogenes Allen. Louisville: WJK Press, 2010. xvi + 223 pp.

In the Second Century of the Common Era a group of theologians emerged who sought to defend and define the Christian faith in the context of their Greco-Roman context. We call them, the Apologists. They didn’t apologize for the faith, they gave a spirited defense. Down through history other theologians and philosophers have done the same thing. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers is one of the best examples of such a genre. Diogenes Allen’s Theology for a Troubled Believer stands in this tradition, though his audience isn’t the cultured despiser, but rather the “troubled believer,” the person struggling to make sense of their faith.

We tend to think from and write from the basis of our own training and background. As a historian, I tend to do theology from a historical perspective. Diogenes Allen, on the other hand, is a philosopher of religion, and in writing his theology he leans heavily on his specialization. Allen is Stuart Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton Seminary. He is, of Greek background, but is a member of the Episcopal Church (and that affiliation shows throughout the book). He is not a traditional conservative, but he’s not a liberal either. He accepts, for instance, the legitimacy of evolution and affirms the importance of reason in understanding the Christian faith. But, he still comes at the questions of faith from a rather traditional perspective, putting little trust in modern explanations of reality. He rarely engages contemporary theologians – Barth is mentioned once – and the few references to process theology are negative – to the point of equating it with Greco-Roman pagan ideologies.

Bringing together a mix of traditional understandings, a philosophical starting point, and a desire to understand the biblical narrative, Allen sets out to write a theology that would try to provide answers to questions of meaning and purpose. That is, after all, one of the reasons the people turn to Christianity. He offers six reasons why people turn to Christianity – they have unworkable lives and need answers; they appreciate the beauty of Christianity’s ideals, such as love and service; a sense of failure and guilt, accompanied by a search for relief; a hunger for God, as evidenced by Augustine’s famous saying about restless hearts; spiritual experiences; and finally they are seeking meaning in life. It is this final quest that drives the book.

Allen engages in a dialogue between philosophy and the Bible. As noted earlier, there is little interaction with contemporary theologians. He is more comfortable with Scripture, philosophers, novelists, and early Christian thinkers such as Athanasius, though he likes Pascal and Simone Weil. As a theologian, he starts from the premise that the foundation of theology is Scripture. It is the primary source, but that being said, theology would not exist had the Greeks not entered into the conversation, asking of the text the question “why.” Theology, therefore, in Allen’s view, involves the “examination of various themes in biblical history, such as creation and the incarnation, where possible asking and answering questions about what they mean and imply, and in that exploration often seeking to relate these themes to what other fields of investigation are uncovering, such as history, archaeology, cosmology, psychology, or biology” (p. xix).

With Scripture as the primary source, Allen begins his theological journey, in conversation with other fields of investigation, focusing on five primary areas – The nature of God, suffering, the Divine sacrifices, new life in God, and response to God. Coming at the end of the book, Allen gives the briefest of discussions to such theological questions as the Holy Spirit, the church, the sacraments, sin, evil, and hope. His primary concern is trying to understand the nature and purpose of God and the way in which this relates to the question of suffering. Indeed, he expends three chapters on suffering and four on divine sacrifices. In his quest to understand the nature of God, he begins not with creation, as one would expect, but with the revelation of God in the Sinai to Moses. He does this because the message of the Bible is focused on Yahweh making Israel a people and being for them a personal God. Only after this is established is the reflection on creation important. He writes:

Taking things in this order will enable us to understand how the very notion of creation is transformed by the Jewish claim that Yahweh made the heavens and earth. What Yahweh is affects what creation is understood to mean (p. 3).

Although philosophy is an important part of his presentation, he is clear that the questions begin and end in Scripture. With that primacy established, he is content to move on to reflections on creation and the challenges of science.

Allen is concerned not just with offering an argument for the existence of God. Indeed, he finds the traditional arguments for God’s existence ultimately unsatisfactory, including that of Aquinas. Nature can provide a witness, but it is limited, and thus we must ultimately rely on the witness of Scripture. What he is most concerned about is affirming the holiness of God, by which he means the goodness of God. He seeks to do this in the face of intellectual questions, but also in answer to the questions of theodicy, which is why he focuses so heavily on suffering. While he finds process theology less than compelling – comparing it to Greco-Roman paganism – he goes part of the way with process. He notes that the idea of divine omnipotence is not biblical. We make a mistake, he suggests, if we treat the biblical word “almighty” as being equivalent to “omnipotent,” because while “omnipotence,” suggests that God “can do all things,” the word “almighty” suggests that God has authority over all things. One word speaks of ability to do something, the other speaks of rule. While the idea of omnipotence is foreign to scripture, it is also philosophically indefensible. Ultimately assertions of this nature have to be qualified to such an extent that the meaning is not that God can do all things, but simply that God has great power. Otherwise, the question remains – if God can do all things, then why does God not prevent evil and suffering?

As for Christology, he accepts the traditional definition of the two natures of Christ, which he pictures as the intersection of two planes of existence. Everything he does and says is done and said simultaneously as both divine and human. On the question of atonement, he doesn’t find any of the traditional answers complete, and so he contents himself with staying with the biblical story and not going beyond it to traditional theories. There is suffering, affliction, separation, but ultimately it is the combination of both God’s love and God’s power that makes the cross holy and salvific. He writes: “Of itself, the crucifixion is but a judicial murder. Only God’s power and love make it a holy and saving sacrifice. We are asked to see and confess that Jesus’ crucifixion is the wisdom of God” (p. 126). As for atonement, a concept he seeks to reclaim, it is “the restoration of the human capacity to know, love, and obey God – the restoration of the image that God bestowed in the first creation” (p. 127). Resurrection is ultimately God’s vindication of Jesus.

This is one of those books that one has mixed feelings about. There is much that I enjoyed and yet I also found some parts less than helpful. He is wrestling with important issues, but in many ways his discussions seem dated. That may be one reason why I wish he had interacted more with contemporary theology. Another issue has to do with audience. The sub-title suggests that this is an introduction, but the writing style is rather dense and likely not appropriate for most general readers. One needs at least some philosophical and biblical background for it to be understandable and useful. Ultimately, however, the point is well taken – we must wrestle with the difficult questions of faith – and that requires that we bring to bear reason on questions of faith. His perspective might be best summed up in a few sentences found early in the book.

Belief in God is not something below the level of reason, and so irrational. Rather, it is something that is above reason, suprarational. By God’s very nature, God is unbounded, without limits, or infinite, and God’s fullness is incomprehensible to anything less than the mind of God itself. But God through God’s loving actions on us enables the mind and heart to rise above their normal ability , and to respond with faith in God, who reveals Godself to various people known to us in the Bible and above all in Jesus. (p. 53).

Whether this is sufficient to calm the troubled heart of a questioning believer is uncertain.  What is true here is that Allen wants to present an intellectually credible witness to the biblical God, which in the mind of this reviewer is a worthy goal.