What is God in Character, Sovereignty, and Rule?

What is God in Character,

Sovereignty and Rule?

by R.E. Slater

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

What is Divine Sovereignty?

Here are several definitions of God's sovereignty. As a process theologian I work within a panentheistic framework and not a theistic nor pantheistic framework. Most of the definitions given below are from a theistic framework although I like how John Paul II expresses sovereignty as a dual relationship between God and creation.

In the kind of Process theology I have been forming (and yes, there are many kinds of process thought, not only Christian but Islamic, Jewish, Asian, etc) has come up from the Reformed side of my Baptist faith. I began with Arminianism and uplifted it into Open and Relational Theology then completed it as an Open and Relational PROCESS theology.

I have written past articles on sovereignty but as the years past my processual understanding grows with the subject. For today's purpose I have provided a simple definition and then have given my reasons for this definition. See what you think.

- R.E. Slater

Commonly - The sovereignty of God is the fact that he is the Lord over creation; as sovereign, he exercises his rule. This rule is exercised through God's authority as king, his control over all things, and his presence with his covenantal people and throughout his creation.

Lutheranism - The major components of the biblical concept of divine sovereignty or lordship are God's control, authority, and presence (see John Frame, The Doctrine of God, 21–115). His control means that everything happens according to his plan and intention. Authority means that all his commands ought to be obeyed.

Calvinism - The sovereignty of God is the same as the lordship of God, for God is the sovereign over all of creation. The major components of God’s lordship are his control, authority, and covenantal presence.

Arminianism - To Arminians, then, the decision to believe and repent is a decision which a sovereign God granted to humanity. Thus, free will is granted and limited by God's sovereignty, but God's sovereignty allows all men the choice to accept the Gospel of Jesus through faith, simultaneously allowing all men to resist.

Catholicism - The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) express the concept of God's sovereignty as his rule over his creation, allowing human libertarian free will and co-operation with him: "God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, [...]".

- John Paul II 1993, Section II, Ch. 1, Article 1, §4 Providence and secondary causes, item 306.

Eastern Orthodoxy - In general, Eastern Theology places much more emphasis on human freedom and less on God's sovereignty than do the Augustinian and Reformed strands of Western theology. Orthodox view of human free will is close to the Wesleyan-Arminian view. - Fairbairn, Donald (2002). Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes. London: Westminster John Knox Press.

Process Theology - In Christian freedom, God is sovereign, but it is a sovereignty of love, not a sovereignty of control.

God's Sovereignty is One of Love - 

Not Power. Not Control. Love

by R.E. Slater

The Christian message I grew up with was one that I consider a terrible teaching to children and teens. I don't think it has changed much today. My faith now has no hell, hades, or purgatory in it... if these eternal states are real they must exist during our earthly lives such as seen with the poor innocents of Gaza, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Central America, and within America.

For God to be a God of love people say he must be just and avenge sin and evil. The Bible shares these thoughts of God's character in its passages time-and-again... that the God of the bible is a God of violence, ruin, and destruction. In fact, the bible ends on this "high note" of ruination and damnation in the last book of the bible, Revelation, completing its journey started at Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden.

Meaning, God's love is not unlike our own human emotions projecting our forms of justice upon the world so that we feel safe, secure, and free to live in peace and serenity within our communities.

This is how American evangelicalism projects itself. Full of guns, retribution, and revenge. It is little different from Islam's violent Jihadism.

And then Jesus comes along and says to the keepers of Torah - the priests, scribes, and later, rabbi's, of the first century - that their stories of Divine Imprecation and  Judgment speaks to their version of God and not to Jesus' version of God.

Said Jesus, "God's sovereignty doesn't rest on Might and Power but upon the weakness of Love" in so many words. That is, Jesus rejects the Temple's kind of Judaism and shows how God serves, sacrifices, shares, listens, heals, renews, and redeems. Not unlike Judaism's Old Testament (OT) God on his best days - but quite unlike their Warrior God which they have cultivated into their theology and deeply care about... needing it to be true as they live under the unwanted, secular reign of a foreign power known as Rome.

And thus, over the centuries since Jesus' coming, the better, humbler elements of the church seeks to be, and enact, love... but under Catholicism, Reformation Protestantism, and Orthodoxy we see the Wrathful-God-version of the OT overtake the Loving-God-version of the New Testament (NT) as read in the texts of Paul, Peter, John, and so on.

So what version of God is God?

Is God a God of damnation and hell? Or a version of Jesus's Loving Redeemer?

I, for one, might answer this query in a number of ways but the one answer I like most is the one stating that the narratives in the bible speak to the religious mindset of humanity at the time... which also includes the church ages after the NT in its own interpretations of the bible... including our own religious mindsets today.

And if I extend God's Spirit of inspiration from the Bible till now as an everyday common occurrence between men of any faith and God, then I have the foundations to question why our stories favor a Powerful God over a Loving God?

When looking around at the films, movies, and TV stories out on cable; or the best sellers and popular classics on the bookshelves and libraries; or the sports and SciFi genres of digital games; nothing seems to have changed in human cultures. We seem to be a violent species which find it difficult not to be us. And we have made of God a violent Power as an idol to ourselves.

As with Jesus - when teaching the OT - I find a deeper, more fulfilling inspiration of the Spirit in retelling the narratives of the bible using God's Love as the seed, theme, and outcome-objective of the story even as Jesus, Paul, and the apostles sometimes did. Otherwise, the spirit of this world will act according to itself and the outcomes in Revelation will be as real now as they been many times over in history.

Somehow, in our storytelling and worship, we must fill God's majestic holy Sovereignty with Almighty Love and not vengeful justice... which is unloving and unGodlike. For instance, I can teach "the Day of the Lord" all day long but ultimately it means God cleans house first with his people before judging the wicked and unjust.

The prophets warned of lusting for a God of justice over a God of love. Why? Because what we teach others is how we will learn to act. If we teach a violent God, then violence will be part of our life-character. And if teaching a loving God, then lovingkindness will become a part of our demeanors and relationships with others.

It seems to be a choice God has given us when sending Jesus and asking whether we will humble ourselves and repent and follow him - or stiffen our resolve to become our own God and see all of life as a tit-for-tat, eye-for-eye, struggle for supremacy over another. Which, in stark proverbial undertones, smacks of foolishness and unwise behavior.

This does not mean worshipping a loving God dispenses with justice... but  it does mean that we dispense a "measured form of justice" that is restorative and renewing amid the many sordid evils abounding around us.

If we follow a God of love and not a God of wrath and judgment it means that a civil society might have a better chance of acting civilly with one another. And in doing so this will greatly help a civil society - such as America's Constitutional democratic society - to lean into its idealism of designs and purposes when worshipping a God of love rather than a God of wrath and judgment.

R.E. Slater

February 22, 2024

Additional Reading Material - 

A Relational View of God’s Sovereignty, Roger E. Olson

My office phone rang and I answered it. A stern voice said “Is this Roger Olson?” who which I confessed. The man introduced himself as pastor of Baptist church in the state, implying that he was a constituent of the seminary where I teach. Anyway, I got the message. “I hear you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty,” he declared. I responded “Oh, really? What do you mean by ‘God’s sovereignty’?” He said “You, know. God is in control of everything.” I decided to play with him a little. “Oh, so you believe God caused the holocaust and every other evil event in human history? That God is the author of sin and evil?” There was a long pause. Then he said “Well, no.” “Then do you believe in God’s sovereignty?” I asked. He mumbled something about just wanting to “make sure” and hung up.

* * * * * * *

A Short by Rance

"God loves you so much that he sent his Son to earth to die for you so you can go to heaven where there are streets of gold and you get to worship him and throw crowns at his feet forever....

"But, if you don’t accept him and believe in him, Jesus will throw your ass (actually your whole body) into a lake of fire (or a fiery oven, or outer darkness, take your pick depending on which passage you read) where you will weep, wail, and gnash your teeth as you are actively tortured day and night for the next trillion trillion trillion years (and you’re just getting started at that point!)."

Says I, "What a bunch of crock! And it’s not actually what the Gospel is!"

"And if that message really was in the Bible, and if it was the [actual] Christian gospel - which it isn’t; just more bad superficial interpretation - I, for one, would never believe it.

"However, if indeed this was the true Christian message (actually read the book of Acts to see that this is not even close to what the message was), I’d immediately start looking for something else to believe because this is just too insane.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is a crock of manure."

Thomas Jay Oord - Prevenient Grace & Questions of God's Love

Prevenient Grace All the Way Down
by Thomas Jay Oord

In recent years, I've been developing and exploring a theological view I call "essential kenosis." It fits nicely with theological traditions that say creatures have genuine freedom to respond well or poorly to God.

I see parallels between essential kenosis and a theory called "prevenient grace," which emerged earlier in Christian history. Prevenient grace says God acts first ("pre") in love ("grace") to provide freedom (among other things) to humans. We must decide how we will respond to God's initiating action of love. Today, those in the Wesleyan tradition are most likely to embrace prevenient grace theory.

I believe essential kenosis extends prevenient grace beyond its usual application. Essential kenosis says God graces ALL creatures, not just humans. God gives freedom to complex creatures, agency and/or self-organization to less complex, and spontaneity to the most basic creaturely entities. 

It's prevenient grace all the way down. 

Essential kenosis says something else not usually associated with prevenient grace. It says God necessarily gives freedom, agency, self-organization or mere existence to creation. "Necessarily" means God must give, because giving in love is who God is.

God gives gifts in each moment, because God's nature is self-giving, others-empowering love. This means these loving gifts are irrevocable, to use the Apostle Paul's words (Rm. 11:29). Consequently, God can't control anyone OR anything.

Wesleyans argue prevenient grace makes a huge difference in understanding salvation. God never forces us to repent; but God empowers and calls us. When God’s action is understood in the light of love, prevenient grace makes sense to many.

Essential kenosis expands the notion of prevenient grace for salvation to say God expresses uncontrolling love for all creation. This makes a difference for understanding how God acts to redeem all creatures and all creation, as the Apostle Paul suggests (see Rm. 8:20-21). God doesn't force humans, other creatures, or any aspect of creation!

I need to develop in detail an uncontrolling love eschatology. But I give an overview of what one looks like in my book, God Can't. I call it "the relentless love" view. For details, see the last chapter of the book.

Amazon Link

Amazon Link

Five Questions of My Theology of Love

article link

by Thomas Jay Oord

December 10, 2019

An academic book of essays on love was recently published. My friend Kevin Vanhoozer wrote the first essay, and the second is my response.

Kevin criticizes my theology of love in various ways, preferring instead John Webster’s theology. I address his criticisms in my full essay, but I thought I’d excerpt a portion here. For the full essay, get the book.

Amazon Link

Kevin asks five questions, which I list below and offer brief answers. I’m posting these because they might be questions others have.


1) How does Oord reconcile his definition of love as intentional action with his insistence that God necessarily loves everyone, everywhere, all the time?

Answer: I affirm that God can love both intentionally and necessarily. I see no conflict in affirming both. In my view, God necessarily loves, but God freely chooses various ways to love.

Because love comes logically first in God’s nature and God “cannot deny himself” (2 Tm. 2:13), God must love. God is not free to do otherwise. But God is free when deciding how to love. The how of love is contingent, not necessary.

I embrace the essentialist tradition when it comes to believing God cannot deny God’s own nature. But because I believe God faces an open and yet to be determined future, I also embrace voluntarist claims about God’s free choices in choosing how to love. God freely acts in various ways when anticipating what may occur in the future.

As an analogy, let’s assume that my human nature leads me necessarily to act humanly. I can necessarily act as a human and still intentionally choose to type this sentence instead of another. I’m free in this sense. In fact, I’m free to type a wide variety of sentences, despite not being free to be other than human.

In this way, necessity in nature and free intentional action coexist. We can necessarily be human and yet free to act variously as humans. Analogously, God can necessarily love everyone and yet freely and intentionally choose how to love moment by moment.

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(2) Does Oord truly preserve the Creator/creature distinction, or is God on the same metaphysical level with the rest of created reality? If the call to love that God gives each creature is in one sense “no different from the causal influence that other creatures exert,” then doesn’t God exist on the same plane of being as everything else?

Answer: At the start of his essay, Vanhoozer provides a teaser about the worries he voices in this question and that emerge later in his essay. He worries that my theology might be a Feuerbachian projection.

Vanhoozer offers theological realism as an alternative to anthropomorphic hubris, a position that says we can be wrong in our descriptions of God’s love. I join Vanhoozer in being a realist in this sense. I don’t think we can ever grasp divine love fully or define it perfectly. We see through a glass darkly.

I also believe, however, that we should seek to know something of the God whom we can never fully know. I think we should try to grasp divine love as best we can and define it as well as possible. In this, I steer clear of both absolute apophatism and thoroughgoing anthropomorphism.

Wikipedia - Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology, is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God. It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.

The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which aims at the vision of God, the perception of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception.

To make sense of God’s love, actions, and more, I think we should draw bidirectional analogies between Creator and creatures. Without them, I think we fail to do justice to the biblical witness and fail to understand well what it means to be made in the image of God. We can embrace such bidirectional analogies without considering God to be on the same metaphysical level or plane as creatures. Creator and creatures differ in some respects but also share some similarities. I’ll address this more in the second half of this response.

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(3) Does Oord derive his definition of love from the event of Jesus Christ or from somewhere else?

Answer: Vanhoozer asks this question as an either/or choice. For me, the answer is both/and. I accept the revelation of God’s love found in Jesus and the revelation of God in creation more generally. As I see it, the clearest expression of love comes in Jesus, and therefore he becomes crucial to defining love well. But I’m also confident that my views of love have been shaped by the broader biblical witness, the Christian community, and the revelation of God in creation more generally.

Because God is omnipresent and self-revealing to all creation, those who know nothing of Jesus can accept my definition of love. In fact, adherents of other religious traditions affirm my definition. Those involved in other religions may find resonance between my views of love and what they find about love in their own texts and communities, thanks to God’s prevenient grace expressed throughout all creation.[1]

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(4) In “solving” the problem of evil by stipulating God’s nature as uncontrolling love, does Oord render insoluble the equally important question, “What may we hope?” Oord stresses the importance of human participation in what he calls “participatory eschatology”: “God’s kenotic love invites creatures to participate in securing victory.” But why think that the entropic universe, much less rebellious children, will come around to God’s way at the end of time? Does not this solution to the problem of evil render evil metaphysically unavoidable and necessary?

Answer: There are several questions here. All of them point to eschatological concerns. Answering them well requires at least a book. But I’ll offer a few brief responses that I hope provide light. (I also offered a blog essay on my eschatology, which readers can find here.)

My theology of love’s eschatological vision does not support the kind of universalism that some theologians desire. While it supports the hope that all will cooperate with God, it does not support theories that require divine coercion for redemption.

My participatory eschatology provides some guarantees. It guarantees that God never gives up seeking to save the lost. It guarantees that God’s love is always uncontrolling. God never uses coercion but always calls creatures to say “yes” to abundant life. This inviting, empowering, but uncontrolling love is expressed both in this life and the next. God’s wooing never ceases.

My eschatology also guarantees that those who cooperate with God in this life and the next enjoy abundant life. It supports the hope that cooperators enjoy untold bliss in the afterlife. It cannot guarantee that everyone will enjoy this bliss, because it says God never forces the good life on others. God respects the freedom of rebellious children who continue to reject salvation.

In sum, my eschatology rejects unilaterally secured universalism. But it also rejects the view that God gives up loving creatures and offering eternal life. My vision provides genuine hope for abundant life here and now and eternal bliss there and then for those who cooperate with God’s love.

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(5) If Oord is right, is the God who is uncontrolling love more deserving of our worship or  [our] sympathy?

Answer: The God of uncontrolling love is worthy of our worship. I worship this God unreservedly and wholeheartedly. Doing so brings me great joy!

I’ve spent significant time thinking about what vision of God provokes my worship. I’ve come to think it’s impossible for me to worship a God who could prevent genuine evil but fails to do so. I don’t unequivocally respect humans who fail to prevent evil when their doing so was possible.

So I can’t unequivocally worship a God capable of preventing genuine evil but who fails to do so. I may dread this God. But I could not unreservedly love and worship such a being. As I see it, the God who can control is unworthy of my worship.

Vanhoozer’s mentions pity as a possible response to my vision of God, and this reminds me of a recent conversation. I was explaining to a fellow theologian that the uncontrolling God cannot prevent genuine evil by acting alone. My friend responded that he prefers a God who can control. He smirked and said, “You know, Tom, your God is just doing the best He can.” I thought about his remark and responded, “Your God could be doing a whole lot more. But He apparently doesn’t care enough to do so!”

I mention this conversation because it illustrates how love is my fundamental theological intuition. When I think about a God worthy of worship, I find far more winsome the vision of a God who consistently loves but cannot control than a God who can control but loves inconsistently by causing or allowing evil.

Some claim the God they affirm both controls and loves consistently. In light of evil, they say it is a mystery how God does both. This measure of mystery, however, detracts from my worship. I’m unable to worship a God who cannot be understood to such a degree.

I can’t get motivated to worship an incomprehensible God.

- TJO

*[1] As just one example, see Rabbi Bradley Artson’s work on love, which draws from my definition (God of Becoming and Relationship [Nashville: Jewish Lights, 2016].

Thomas Jay Oord - Select Videos: Open and Relational Process Theology

Thomas Jay Oord - What is Process Theology

Tom Oord, "The God of Non­coercive Love

in the Face of Randomness and Evil"

What is Essential Kenosis? A short explanation

Thomas Jay Oord:

Love's Essential Aspects and Diverse Forms

Thomas Jay Oord - God Can’t Stop Evil Singlehandedly

LRR: God Can't, Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord - Lecture on Randomness and Providence

of God in an Open and Relational perspective

Why Go Wesleyan? 13 Reasons from Tom Oord

On Salvation: God's part and ours

Essentials, Nonessentials, and Love

Thomas Jay Oord - 

How does petitionary prayer work in Open Theism?

Thomas Jay Oord -

What is your view of kenotic theology?

Thomas Jay Oord - 

What is Open Theism and why is this an attractive view?

Thomas Jay Oord - What are miracles?

Rethinking Hell Live 020:

Relentless Love? An Interview with Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord - 9 Reasons We Have Genuine but Limited Freedom

Amazon Link

Book Blurb

Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy's greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It's particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn't exist, does it make sense to act as though it does?

These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy--grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today's brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience.

* * * * * * * * * * *


9 Reasons We Have Genuine

but Limited Freedom

Article Link

by Thomas Jay Oord

May 29th, 2017

An essay I wrote has just been published. I argue humans and God have genuine but limited freedom. The new book is What’s with Free Will? Ethics and Religion after Neuroscience, edited by James Walters and Philip Clayton.

The book responds to some neuroscientists who claim human free will is an illusion. These neuroscientists base their views on a few experiments. For many reasons, I believe they are wrong in thinking this. The experiments don’t come close to disproving human freedom.

Here is a portion of my book chapter. I offer nine reasons why we should believe humans have genuine but limited freedom:

We should affirm human freedom because…

1 - belief in freedom fits the data we know best: that we are freely choosing selves. We all presuppose in our actions that we make free choices and we know this from our first-person perspectives. We have better grounds to think human freedom is genuine than think it is not.

2 - it helps us make sense of other creatures, especially humans. This argument fits nicely with what philosophers call “the analogy of other minds.” I think of it often when I consider how parents raise children. Nearly all parents believe their kids have some degree of freedom, at least sometimes, and they reward or discipline their children accordingly.

3 - belief in freedom seems necessary to affirm human moral responsibility. This is an obvious reason why we should believe humans are free. Without freedom, humans seem neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. Moral responsibility requires free response-ability.

4 - it’s a component of love. When it comes to humans, it’s difficult to think we can make sense of love if we think humans are not free in any sense. Robots may do good things, but unless we define love in an odd way, we don’t think robots can love. Love requires genuine but limited freedom.

5 - belief in freedom seems necessary to affirm that we sometimes intentionally learn new information. Insofar as students choose to be educated, this choice presupposes free will. Insofar as we all seek to learn, we act freely.

6 - it accounts for intentional actions to reject the old and welcome the new or reject the new and return to the old. Conservatives appeal to freedom when calling us to return to past ideas, and progressives appeal to freedom when calling us to embrace new ones. Intentional change presupposes free will.

7 - belief in freedom is part of what motivates many people to choose good over evil. Those who believe their negative urges are beyond their control typically fail to resist those negative urges. And those who encounter evil are unlikely to resist it if they feel nothing can be done. After all, why try to combat antisocial behavior if we’re not free?

8 - it is necessary for believing our lives matter. If all life is predetermined, it makes no sense to think our lives have meaning or that what we do ultimately matters. If all comes down to fate, we make no real contribution to what has already been decided.

9 - belief in freedom is most compatible with believing God loves us. This is not only true if one believes a loving God would give freedom to creatures. It’s also true for rejecting the view that God praises or punishes creatures who are not free. A fully predestining God has no grounds to judge predetermined creatures.

10 - The final reason I list for why we should believe humans have genuine but limited freedom refers to God. In the second half of my essay, I explore what God’s freedom might be like. But I believe descriptions of divine freedom will be inadequate if we don’t also explore the relationship between God’s love and power, creaturely freedom, and evil in the world. So I explore those ideas as well.

I hope you consider getting a copy of this new book. When you read my full essay, let me know what you think of my arguments.

In the meantime, below is a short video with these 9 reasons…

Tom Oord, "The God of Non­coercive Love

in the Face of Randomness and Evil"

Thomas Jay Oord - 7 Models of Divine Sovereignty

Models of God’s Action

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/models-of-gods-action

by Thomas Jay Oord

March 1, 2020

A few podcast hosts have asked me to “locate” my theology in relation to other views of God. This is natural, and I like to compare views of God. Comparisons help me explain my Uncontrolling Love of God theology, which I also call Essential Kenosis.

In my book The Uncontrolling Love of God, I explore seven models of God and sketch out their implications. I don’t claim they are the only possible models. But they represent major options for understanding divine action in Christian theology. Here are the models…

In the book, I describe in some detail how each model of God portrays creaturely randomness, free will, goodness, evil, and God’s love and power. Below I’ve excerpted descriptions of each as they address evil. Find a fuller account in The Uncontrolling Love of God.

Amazon Link

1 - God is the Omnicause

This model says God causes all things. What appears to be random or activities of free-will creatures are in accordance with God’s will, in such a way that God ultimately makes them happen, as they happen. God is in complete control.

According to this model, all occurrences are part of the “secret providence of God,” to quote John Calvin. “The great works of the Lord are carefully crafted,” says Calvin, “so that in a wonderful and ineffable way nothing happens contrary to his will, even that which is contrary to his will!” Paul Kjoss Helseth, a contemporary advocate of the model, calls it “divine omnicausality.”

This model sounds to critics like God promotes sin and evil. It is hard – in fact, impossible for me – to believe God perfectly loves while also being the ultimate cause of every rape, torture, disease, and terrorist act. To me, this model makes little, if any, sense.

2 - God Empowers and Overpowers

This model of God is most common among “average” Christian believers. It says God creates and empowers humans by giving them free will, at least sometimes. But God sometimes overpowers human freedom or interrupts the causal regularities of existence. God’s will is sometimes permissive and sometimes controlling.

Some versions of Arminian theology embrace the God Empowers and Overpowers model. Arminian theologian, Jack Cottrell, says that “even though [God] bestowed relative independence on his creatures, as Creator he reserved the right to intervene if necessary. Thus he is able not only to permit human actions to occur, but also to prevent them from occurring if he so chooses.” This allows God, says Cottrell, to “remain in complete control.”

Those who embrace this model typically say God does not cause evil. They usually blame human freedom gone awry, chance, or demonic forces. But they believe God permits or allows evil. After all, the God in this model has controlling power.

Although this model may allow advocates to say God is not the source of evil, it makes God responsible for failing to prevent evil. It’s hard to believe God loves perfectly when God can prevent genuine evil. This God may not cause evil but is culpable for failing to prevent it.

3 - God is Voluntarily Self-Limited

This model starts with the premise God essentially has the kind of power to create something from nothing and control others. Despite having the capacity to be controlling, God made a voluntary decision to give freedom to at least some creatures. In doing so, God voluntarily gave up total control but can intervene to control if God desires.

John Polkinghorne is an advocate of the Voluntarily Self-Limited God model. God’s “act of creation involves a voluntary limitation,” says Polkinghorne, “in allowing the other to be.” This means “God does not will the act of a murderer or the destructive force of an earthquake but allows both to happen in a world in which divine power is deliberately self-limited to allow causal space for creatures.”

This model says God could withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom/agency to creatures. God could momentarily overturn the regularities/natural laws of the universe. But God rarely does so.

I can think of numerous evil events a voluntarily self-limited God should have prevented. This God should momentarily become un-self-limited to prevent those evils. A perfectly loving God should and would prevent genuine evil, if it were possible. Consequently, I cannot believe the God described in this model loves perfectly.

4 - God is Essentially Kenotic / Uncontrolling Love

The God is Essentially Kenotic model says God’s eternal nature is uncontrolling love.

Because of love, God necessarily provides freedom/agency to creatures in each moment. God works by empowering and inspiring creatures of all levels of complexity toward well-being. And God necessarily upholds the regularities of the universe, because those regularities derive from God’s eternal nature of love. God is not a dictator, mysteriously behind the scenes pulling strings.

Although this model says God never totally controls others, it claims God sometimes acts miraculously in noncoercive ways. Miracles occur when God and creatures work in tandem. God providentially guides and calls all creation toward love and beauty.

God’s nature of love logically precedes God’s sovereign will. Kenosis derives from God’s eternal and unchanging nature of love and not from voluntary divine decisions. And because God’s nature is love, God always gives freedom, agency, and self-organization to creatures and sustains the regularities of nature.

This model says God can’t prevent singlehandedly, because God’s love is always uncontrolling. God loves everyone and everything, so God can’t control anyone or anything. I explain this view in The Uncontrolling Love of God and God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils.

5 - God Sustains as a Steady State Force

This model says God exists as an impersonal force creating and sustaining all creation. God’s steady-state influence never violates the integrity of the universe. The divine presence never varies, and God never interacts in give-and-receive relationships.

Paul Tillich advocates this model of God. “It is an insult to the divine holiness to treat God as a partner with whom one collaborates,” says Tillich, “or as a superior power whom one influences by rites and prayers.”

Overall, this view affirms divine constancy. God sustains the natural laws, creates conditions for creaturely freedom, and makes chance possible. But it fails to offer support to the idea God is personal, interactive, and involved in relations with creation. It fails to give hope that God will act any differently to help when we encounter evil.

6 - God is Initial Creator and Current Observer

This model says that after creating the universe, God did not stick around or stay involved. God created all things, set natural laws in motion, and has since withdrawn. God is now, to quote Bette Midler, “watching us from a distance.”

Historians identify several thinkers during the Enlightenment with this model. It typically goes under the name “deism.” Deist Michael Corey says, God’s creative activity “is confined to the initial moments of creation,” and afterward, God “allowed [the first atoms and molecules] to develop on their own entirely according to natural cause-and-effect processes.”

Corey believes “a God who continually has to intervene to accomplish His creative purposes is clearly inferior… in the same way that a car-maker who is clever enough to design self-building cars is far more impressive than one who has to be directly involved during each step of the creative process.”

Putting God’s action only at initial creation means this model has difficulty explaining how an omnipotent God would have created a world with so much evil. One wonders: is this the best God can create? To use Corey’s illustration, Couldn’t a really clever car-maker design self-building cars that function more reliably?

This model offers no hope God acts to overcome evil eventually or console those in pain now.

7 -God’s Ways are Not Our Ways

Versions of this final model vary widely. Each shares the fundamental belief we ultimately have no idea what God’s actions are like. No language, no analogy, and no concepts can tell us the nature of divine providence. All is mystery.

The technical word sometimes used for this model is “apophatic theology.” It says we cannot describe God or divine activity positively. We can only talk about what God is not.

This model of God obviously cannot provide a satisfying answer to why a loving and powerful God fails to prevent evil.

Advocates of most other models of God resort to this mystery card when their views make little sense. “Remember: God’s ways are not our ways,” they say. In fact, the “God’s Ways are Not Our Ways” view is not probably a model of God’s action at all. But I included it, because many who talk about God and evil eventually appeal to this model.

Conclusion

This is not an exhaustive list of models of God. But I consider these the main ones. These brief sketches give a taste of what each thinks about God’s actions in relation to evil.

I have argued in various publications that the “God is Essentially Kenotic – Uncontrolling Love” model best accounts for evil. This brief essay shows how this model compares to other models of God.

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Catherine Keller - How to think about the pandemic

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It awaits us to determine how we will react to crises in our lives

always with God as our helper as we work towards resolution.

- Catherine Keller, "How to think about the pandemic"

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Keller_(theologian)

A Letter from Catherine Keller

https://medium.com/@dostlund_42808/a-letter-from-catherine-keller-1930029c4914

April 2, 2020

Dear Ones,

Particularly, in this letter, ones who claim some seriously biblical, or explicitly theological, orientation. Amidst this pandemic, ones who may be wondering….

Is God punishing us?

We — the human species — certainly deserve it; we have gone way out of kilter in our most basic creaturely responsibilities. We’re out of balance, way out of sync with the wisdom, the Word, of the creation. We have taken our materiality for granted, in utter ingratitude. Isn’t this pandemic, and maybe worse to come, just what we have coming to us?

Is God testing us?

We surely are being tested, tried, exposed in our multiple vulnerabilities — challenged at our edges, both spiritual and physical. And that is not just as individuals and families and local communities. It is also our systems of life together, our economics and our politics, that are being tested. Some are failing worse than others. And our big national system is so far failing

big-time. But are we all together tested? By God?

Is God teaching us a lesson?

If so, we better learn it fast. So often, we have let the most aggressive and greedy portions of our species organize our material interactions, our global economies. Not that they asked our permission. But we who have less power have ceded much of the life of the planet, local and global, to the systems of power. We blame the powerful, but we do not reclaim the power. We have much to learn…so terrifyingly much.

Is God fixing the world?

Our carbon emissions are coming down, with millions of flights grounded. If emissions keep coming down, we might just prevent that 1.5C rise in global temperature. And pandemic can also bring down population levels, which have grown beyond sustainability. After all, the Bible teaches that it took the Great Flood to bring about a fresh start for humanity — and everything else. Almost total decline of the human population and the nonhuman ones too. Later, it took ten plagues to make Pharaoh “let my people go.” Huge collateral damage to the innocent, like Egyptian children and non-Hebrew slaves! Is our present plague the way God — like it or not — is fixing our world?

For many folks who find solace and guidance from their biblical faith, those questions must somehow be answered ‘yes.’ And this sense of divine intervention may lead them to do good, moral things. They can find biblical passages to read literally, to rip out of their context, to ignore millennia of history between an ancient text and our context, and find this kind of God who is directly and violently punishing, telling, testing, fixing.

I respect anyone’s sincere faith. But faith can get trapped in misguided interpretations. So, in the interest of the truth without which faith is an illusion — let me answer those four questions I posed.

Is the pandemic God’s punishment?

The coronavirus is having punishing effects, largely on the most vulnerable and least deserving. But “punishment” is supposed to signify justice. And yet in this and in most of the plagues of world history, the poor and the frail are the main victims. Doesn’t this make them the objects of a horribly unjust punishment? Besides, if God were the direct controlling agent of history, surely such unjust side-effects, such sloppy collateral damage, could have been avoided! Indeed, our getting to this point would never have been necessary.

God, in scripture, wants justice. So…no. God is not deploying the coronavirus to whip, execute, or otherwise punish us. Not even just to send us to our rooms like naughty children. Besides — isn’t punishment far too crude a notion for what we call God’s will?

Well then, testing us? That isn’t so punitive.

No, it’s not as punitive. But do you mean that God designed the pandemic to try our faith or our character, individual or collective? Again…no. Yes, our capacities are being put to the test as a society, as communities, as individuals — but not because God has selected this means to make folk grow better or stronger through suffering. Often, this “test” will have the opposite effect: we may grow weaker and die. Or we will fail the moral test and stock up for mere survival. Or the political system will pour maximum resources into reviving the economic system — rather than into the screaming needs of the suddenly jobless.

But then, isn’t God teaching us a lesson? Teaching us that we are all interdependent with each other — with all creatures, even with viruses?

No. Not if you mean that God has designed the disease to teach the lesson. It is too little too late, on the front of climate justice. And it is too much too fast, in the assault upon the weak. So, even if, improbably, we do collectively, globally — maybe even nationally — learn a great lesson about our togetherness as creatures, it won’t be because God has decided on pedagogy by plague.

Like it or not, you may insist: this crisis may be how the omnipotent God is now intervening to fix a sinful world. Don’t you believe that the Lord works to repair His world — whatever it takes?

Oh, I do think God works always for tikkun olam, the repair of the world. But no! Not by big destructive omnipotent interventions. No, God is no Big Fixer. The story of the flood powerfully narrates the radical new start that is possible after systemic human ugliness and tremendous natural disaster. And let us remember it is a highly condensed story, as is that of the Exodus — not a natural or literal history. Besides, the repair of the world in the Bible is a work of deep care, not careless destruction. The flood and the plagues, including COVID-19, do not care.

The God of Jesus, however, cares infinitely. And precisely for that reason, that God cannot, must not, be understood any longer as “in control,” as the omnipotent Lord who either always already determines all that is (in which case the world shouldn’t need repair in the first place); or as the One who occasionally steps in Big Time to Fix it.

Yet that is a big debate. “Theodicy” names an old theological argument about how to justify God — as just — in the face of unfair suffering. Christians often just go for the afterlife answer: whatever happens here, God will reward His own in heaven. As to this world, with its COVID-19 and other plagues — they assume it is somehow God’s will that we suffer (as punishment, as test, as lesson, as fix) and, well, it doesn’t matter anyway because I and my own are going to heaven when we die. The big supernaturalist shrug of — whatever.

So, no, I do not think that even the heavenly “out” works to relieve us of our collective human responsibility to be and do this world — better. Now.

Well, then, how is God working? Or are you saying that “God” is just a delusion of my wishful thinking or my unthinking tradition?

No, not that either! It is because we inherit some delusions about God that I offer this theological exercise. Those notions that God is an all-powerful force of control — always or when “He” deems fit — may actually obstruct God’s work in the world and in each of us. And it might be that God’s work in the world depends upon our work — precisely because the mystery called “God” is not a projection of sovereign dominance. Not something, someone, that works by top-down control.

If no, no, no, and no — how, then?

How about — by creative collaboration with the creatures?

The coronavirus is not sent as a divine punishment. But something not unrelated: in this crisis, God may well be calling us all to account, holding us responsible for the wellbeing of our world. It doesn’t mean God willed this crisis to happen — or any of the horrors and holocausts of history. It means that nothing happens apart from God, because God isn’t something that exists

apart from the world: the world is a part of God, and God participates in each part of the world. God feels and suffers it all — with us. But God also calls to us to face the meaning of this punishing plague, to face the interdependence of us all — an interdependence that our civilization conceals from us, that this contagion reveals to us.

God did not create the pandemic in order to test any of us; God didn’t create the pandemic! But perhaps we are being tested. Not by the torments of a bully God, but by invitation to rise to the occasion. To find the courage and the care that will sustain us.

And as a species, are we not being tested — to see if we might come to terms with our creaturely connections to each member of our species and to all the other species of the planet? If we fail the test, it is not that God will punish us but rather the consequences of our collective actions. It is the consequences of our actions and inactions that will bring us down. If not to the virus, then to the catastrophic effects of global warming. Coming soon. But isn’t the ultimate biblical test always and only love? If we rise to the occasion, it is because we grow in that dauntless love that casts out fear.

God is not spreading the coronavirus to teach us a lesson. The disease is the effect of imbalances between culture and nature. In this case, maltreatment of wild animals and systemic disregard for environmental regulations triggered the outbreak. But maybe God is trying to teach a lesson in and through the pandemic. Doesn’t God mean — the one who is always calling, inviting, us each and all? Trying to teach, to inspire, in the midst of whatever is happening?

Why then doesn’t the divine voice break through better? So many who declare themselves God’s spokespersons teach anything but that love — anything but the biblical love of the least, of the stranger, of every other. How can they confine love to their own community, race, religion, kind? How do they manage to drown out God’s teaching? Perhaps, because it comes in such “a still, small voice.” Might this pandemic, demanding so much sudden solitude, give us a chance to enter that stillness?

No, God is not going to fix the world through this or any disaster. So how can we hope for repair of the world? Certainly not by waiting for God to do it for us. Not by ignoring the spirit of wisdom that whispers, that breathes, within each of us always. Each of us individually.

But each, only in our all-togetherness — human, animal, vegetable, mineral. That togetherness takes on new meanings now, in all the layers of planetary interdependence, deadly or benign, oppressive or just, at home or in public. Now, as we learn that social distance does not mean separation, right in the midst of catastrophe, that Spirit might turn you, turn me, turn us together — into catalysts of transformation.

We might not fix much that is already too badly broken. But in a new, dark hopefulness, might we become creative collaborators? Even with the Creator, the one who triggers the simplest matter and the subtlest minds to new creation?

This is not a story of top-down creating. This new creation comes as we cooperate with each other and with the divine source of every other. This is new creativity in and through whatever chaos besets us. The chaos might feel like the Apocalypse. But remember that apokalypsis, at least in the Bible, does not mean The End of the World. It means revelation: not a final closing down, but a great dis/closure.

In whatever chaos we experience, we recycle everything that we can: ecologically and socially, democratically and theologically. We do not wait for a dictatorial fix from on high. We enter into creative collaboration in a process we can neither predict nor control. For the process of the new creation remains mysterious. “The new heaven and earth” translate no longer as supernatural intervention or afterlife escape — but as the radical renewal of atmosphere and earth.

I hope each of the four no’s have morphed into an odd kind of yes. Into affirmations of something of what you — you wondering ones — already deeply sense, feel, consider. And begin to do.

Love,

Catherine

March 2020

catherineekeller.com