Unpacking Open and Relational Theology: Interview with Tom Oord

Text us your questions!

Tom Oord is back! This time, we're discussing his "main thing": open and relational theology. We explore what it means and its significance in reshaping our understanding of God, love, prayer, and more. Tom answers our questions graciously, and we try to convince Randy that he's wrong.

How is open and relational theology different from classical theism? What does it imply about prayer or freedom or evil and suffering? What does love have to do with it? Is it all just a bit too easy?

As always, Tom is a great sport and a hoot to talk to. We hope you find this conversation valuable.

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Episode Transcript

Randy (00:06):
I'm Randy, the pastor, half of the podcast, and my
friend Kyle's a philosopher.
This podcast hostsconversations at the
intersection of philosophy,theology and spirituality.

Kyle (00:15):
We also invite experts to join us, making public a space
that we've often enjoyed off-air, around the proverbial table
with a good drink in the backcorner of a dark pub.

Randy (00:24):
Thanks for joining us and welcome to A Pastor and a
Philosopher.
Walk into a Bar.
Since we've been podcasting,which is several years now,
which feels really weird, to say.
Brett, we have been toying withthe idea of talking about open

(00:47):
theism.
Open theism is something thatkind of drew you and I together,
kyle, because in another life,where we first met each other,
we were both really into opentheism and all things, greg Boyd
, and so we kind of settled onthat.
But since then I've kind of gota little bit less cheery and
optimistic about open theism ingeneral.
You've kind of stuck with it.
And so we were like, look, weshould have a conversation about

(01:09):
this.
We never have.
But our friend, thomas J Orddeals extensively.
He is an open theist andprobably one of the most
foremost open theists in America, I would say really.
And he wrote a book called Openand Relational Theology, an
Introduction to Life-ChangingIdeas, and he wanted to have a
conversation about it.
And so far be it from us to sayno to Tom Ord about talking

(01:29):
about open and relationaltheology.

Kyle (01:32):
Totally yeah, and it was really good.
So both of the books that we'vetalked to him about so we
previously discussed his book onomnipotence and now we're
discussing this one and they'reboth very accessible.
They're pitched at a veryintroductory kind of popular
audience.
For people who have grown up ina certain kind of theological
context, who have been givencertain views of God, they're
probably not doing them.

(01:52):
A whole lot of psychological,good, emotional health is not
something one of the fruits ofthose kinds of theologies, and
so he's giving an alternativehere, an alternative way of
thinking about God, and this oneis far reaching, it's far
broader than the lastconversation we had, because it
touches everything just about inchurch, history and theological
history and your own experiencewith God.

(02:14):
In some way it will be impactedby the ideas in this book and
he proposes it as a healthieralternative.
It's not just an alternative.
It's a this won't do the samekind of damage to you as that
other view of God has probablydone, and so it's a really far
reaching conversation.
It's an interestingconversation.

(02:34):
We didn't get to nearly thethings that we wanted to get to,
which is, I think, just goingto be the way it is talking to
Tom, but that just means he'llkeep coming on and it'll keep
being fun but that just meanshe'll keep coming on and it'll
keep being fun.

Randy (02:46):
Yeah, and I want to say for those of you who, um,
actually do occasionally readthe books that we, that we read
and talk, talk through.
This book is not for those ofyou who, when kyle and our
guests use big words, youunderstand them and you're like
hanging with them.
Don't read this book this bookis for those of you who are like
me, who feel like you'restarting to like slip underwater
a little bit as the bigphilosophical and, you know,
some of the theological wordscome out and you feel like

(03:08):
you're a little bit with theconversation but not quite there
.
This might be for you If you'rejust thinking I want to hold on
to Jesus, I want to hold on tothe Christian faith.
It's been a foundation and ananchor for me, but there's some
questions that I just can't getaround.
I think this book is for you.

(03:30):
This book kind of scratches theitch.
It begins scratching the itchof some of these questions and
some of these things that we arejust kind of feel like they're
a thorn in my side when it comesto faith, when it comes to
continuing down this journey, Iwould say, this good journey of
following Jesus.
This book's for you, I wouldsay.
Would you agree, Kyle?

Kyle (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Randy (03:44):
And.

Kyle (03:44):
Tom's always a great sport as well.

Randy (03:46):
With my objections, he rolls with them, and I try to be
kind with them in this one, sohe's just a hoot to talk to.

(04:10):
Thomas J Ord.
Thank you for joining us again.
Welcome back to A Pastor and aPhilosopher Walking to a Bar.

Tom (04:14):
I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Randy (04:17):
Yeah, so we spoke about your book on amipotence.
Did I get that right Did?

Tom (04:23):
I say that yes, ooh, yes, impressive.

Randy (04:25):
All right.
So omnipotence and also atheological term that you kind
of invented and by kind of Imean you did and also kind of
shatting all over a very, verymainstream doctrine of
omnipotence.
So if you're interestedlisteners in that interview and

(04:47):
that book and that wholesituation, go back and listen to
our first of now.
This is the third interviewwith Thomas Sheard, but, tom,
we're here talking about yourbook, open and Relational
Theology an Introduction toLife-Changing Ideas, and Kyle
and I have been hoping to talkabout open theology since we
started this podcast, reallyprobably about four years ago,

(05:07):
and haven't gotten around to it.
So here we are talking about notjust open theology and open
theism, but open and relationaltheology.
So can you tell us what you'vebeen up to?
We saw you at Theology BeerCamp, but it seems like you're
in all the places all the time.
You're kind of omnipresent asit were what have?
You been up to Tom.

Tom (05:27):
Oh, you know I do a variety of different things, direct a
couple of doctoral programs, soI'm meeting with my doctoral
students from time to time.
In November, though, since youmentioned the Amipotence book,
there was a session at theAmerican Academy of Religion on
the Amipotence book.
A couple of critics, a coupleof supporters and a great
conversation, so that was a lotof fun.

Randy (05:49):
Nice, awesome.
Why don't we just dive right in?

Kyle (05:52):
huh, great, let's do it, and I don't know if you remember
one of the times we spoke wejoked that we were going to have
to convert Randy back to openand relational theology.
We'll see how far we get thistime, because I think, you used
to own the label Randy.
Now you don't anymore.

Randy (06:06):
Well, for the record, when I owned the Open Theist
label, it didn't go along withopen and relational.
That's a newer development inmy world.
I was kind of a disciple ofGreg Boyd, to let you know where
I was coming from Tom, but therelational part of it I
absolutely love and have noissues with the open part of it
minor issues, but we can pretendthat I have major issues with

(06:29):
it if it makes the podcastepisode a little bit better,
yeah, make it more interesting.

Kyle (06:33):
Tom real quick.
So you use the phrase open inrelational theology.
Obviously, open theism is whatit was called when I was reading
about it in college.
Why the distinction?
Is that an important differencefor you?
Obviously that's the relationalaspect, and that's big.

Tom (06:49):
Yeah, I was hanging out with lots of people in the
process theology camp and peoplewho call themselves open
theists and a bunch of peoplecall themselves relational
theists, and they had realdifferences and fights amongst
themselves but they had so muchin common.
I thought, why don't we havelike a big embracing label, open

(07:10):
and relational, that caninclude all those people?
And then, you know, we canfight about our differences,
sure, but we have a lot incommon and we can sort of
proclaim the commonalities whichpertain to the openness of the
future and a relational God,relational universe.
And so I like the big tentapproach.

Randy (07:29):
Yeah Cool.

Kyle (07:33):
So name some people that our listeners might recognize
Well.

Tom (07:36):
Greg Boyd would be open and relational On the process side.
People like John Cobb,catherine Keller, jay McDaniel,
trip Fuller.
Openness folks like JohnSanders, greg Boyd, karen
Winslow, david Basin, billHasker, relational people

(07:57):
there's a whole bunch of those,but it just varies and there's
some people who don't make anyof those labels their first
designation and they might callthemselves a feminist or a
post-colonial person or anArminian or whatever.

Randy (08:15):
I'd personally rather leave the process part out of it
, because this book is aboutopen relational theology.
The process part would open usup to a whole nother
conversation Is that?

Kyle (08:26):
fair, kyle, you okay with that?
That's a huge, huge can ofworms and since that's not like
a thing that you own, I think wecan easily skirt it for this
conversation.
We will have to talk about iteventually, yeah.

Randy (08:34):
For this conversation.
Let's keep that can of wormsclosed.
Tell me, tom, why you I meanyou've really put a lot of chips
into the open and relationalworld.
Tell us why, what about it?

(08:55):
And just introduce for ourlisteners who aren't sure
exactly what open and relationaltheology is.
Maybe we had a debate or hearda debate between John Piper and
Greg Boyd back in the daybetween open theism and
determinism or whatever Boydback in the day, between open
theism and determinism orwhatever, but we're still not
maybe fully sure and the openand relational part sounds kind
of weird and hippie-ish.
Tell us what open andrelational theology is, tom.

Tom (09:14):
Well, the open and open and relational is what most people
think of in terms of open theismthat God is moving through time
with us into a future that'snot only not yet determined or
decided, but even God can'tforeknow with absolute certainty
.
So it has this real sense of anengaged God moment by moment in

(09:37):
time rather than out of time,to use the popular language, and
a God who's not onlyinfluencing us but being
influenced by us.
And those two big ideas fitreally nicely with the notion of
human freedom I call it genuinebut limited freedom so that
people don't think I think we'refree to do absolutely anything

(10:00):
and an emphasis upon love, notonly God's love for us, but that
we are called to love oneanother.
A lot of the obstacles tothinking about God as loving
pertain to God's relationship tous wrath, hell, the problem of
evil, classical notions ofimmutability and passability,

(10:24):
god being unchanging orunaffected, and the opening,
relational community.
In various ways not everybody'son the same page here they
rethink those classic doctrines.

Randy (10:37):
Yeah, Yep, and you just skirted a bunch which your book
goes into in more detail.
It is kind of a taster, asampler book, I would say right,
when you're kind of invitingpeople to think about these
things with you in reallycompelling ways, I think.
And go into a really widespectrum of effects of open in

(10:59):
relational theology, and I thinkthe best part not the best part
, but you just spoke to this andI want to clarify this for our
listeners is the ideas that gointo and the doctrines that are
held by classical theism arereally, really problematic, and
not just in one area or a couple, but there's so many, you know,
threads that you could justfollow down the line that wind

(11:22):
up in really problematic spaces.
If we truly believe that humansare free spaces, if we truly
believe that humans are freeagents, if we truly believe that
God is loving, if we trulybelieve that God is God in
control.
There's all these kind oftentacles that sprout out from
classical theism, some of whichare beautiful and good and you
have no issues with it from whatI can tell and some of which

(11:42):
are very, very problematic, andnot just you have issues with,
but almost all of us.
If we think about the way werelate to one another as humans,
the way we relate to the worldaround us and the way we think
that God could or should operate, become really problematic.
Is that correct?

Tom (12:00):
Yeah, you know I'm in the midst of writing a systematic
theology and one of the earlychapters.
I do what most systematictheologians do I do a quick look
at the arguments for God'sexistence and the arguments
against God's existence and Irealized when looking through
the arguments against God'sexistence that all of the major

(12:20):
ones hinge upon a view of God'ssovereignty that I don't adopt.
That I don't think is true.
Almost the major ones, like theproblem of evil or the problem
of divine hiddenness, orquestions of evolution or
questions of revelation, whydoesn't God give us an inerrant
scripture or give me a crystalclear message that God exists?

(12:42):
All those kinds of reallyimportant objections to belief
in God can be overcome if wethink God is loving but not
omnipotent.
So it matters.

Kyle (12:56):
Yeah.
So what would you say is thecrux of open and relational
theology for you?
Because there's severaldifferent ways someone could
come to it.
So.
So when I decided I wasprobably an open theist back in
the day, it had to do.
Most of this is very nerdy, butit mostly had to do with, like,
the metaphysics of time believeit or not and then like a little

(13:17):
bit less about God directly,although that had some
interesting implications foryour theology, right, but you
could come to it because you'revery concerned about the problem
of evil, for example, and youmight think that none of the
classical theodicies areeffective and in fact, at the
end of the day, you just have toconclude that if God is not
going to be responsible for evil, then God's going to have to be
in a position where God simplycan't do anything about it, and

(13:39):
that might lead you into somekind of open theist, open
relational view.
You could also think that humanfreedom is very important and
you can't think of any other wayto explain it other than you
know something about the basicnature of the world being open,
including contingency.
There's other ways you come toit too.
So, like, what is the crux ofit for you.

(14:00):
What like moved you to thisposition.

Tom (14:02):
Yeah, I would say there were several issues and those
have changed over time.
So, like when I was reallyyoung, it was the free will
versus determinism, you knowGod's grace, and whether or not
we're truly free.
That was huge for me.
Later on it was science andreligion issues.
I just didn't think theclassical view of God meshed

(14:25):
well with the contemporaryscience and major theories, not
just evolution but other thingsas well.
But I think today and theproblem of evil I got to throw
that one in there that'simportant.
I think today the kind ofoverriding reason I'm an open
and relational theologian arethe issues of love.

(14:46):
I think if God is truly lovingand God's love in some way is
analogous to our love, is likeour love in some way, then God
must be not only giving but alsoreceiving.
Relational God must be presentto us and affected and
empathizing with us, and that'san open and relational theme.

(15:06):
God must not be controlling,because love isn't controlling.
You know, I can just go on andon.
All these kind of features ofwhat I think is an ideal
doctrine of divine love meshwith an open and relational
perspective, and they were inthe past.
I was intuiting these kinds ofnotions of God is loving, but

(15:29):
the theology I was given didn'twork well with my intuitions.

Randy (15:34):
And by it didn't work well.
You mean like if you would tryto stand up for the God that you
were, you believed in or weregiven, and then went to a person
who didn't believe and was alittle bit, a little skeptical,
it didn't stand up to it, as ina person would say how in the
world is that God loving?

Tom (15:50):
right or how in the world.

Randy (15:52):
Do you have any real choice in the matter of your
life?
Right, like there's a million,not a million, there's an
unbelievable amount ofobjections to classical theism.
When you just hold it up to thelight of logic and reason, I
would say right.

Tom (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, and it reaches its tentacles in so many
directions.
I was an avid evangelist and Iwould say God's a loving God.
It says right here in the Bible, and somebody on the street
oftentimes homeless people, knowthe Bible better than most
other people They'd say yeah,but what about that God in the
Old Testament?
Who did this or did that?

(16:26):
That's not loving.
And I would really want to say,you know, maybe bashing baby's
heads against the rocks, like itsays in Psalms, maybe that's
loving from God perspective, butthat can't be right.
My intuitions tell me that'snot right.
And so I was battling with thedoctrine of scripture that
seemed to be opposed to whatjust seemed commonsensical.

(16:49):
You know, bashing baby's headsis just not a loving thing to do
.
Or, you know, I wanted topreach the good news of God's
love and generosity of salvationfor everyone.
But then people would tell methere's this thing called hell
that God is going to send peopleto, and I couldn't imagine how
a loving God would send someonethere for eternity.

(17:10):
And so I had these conflictsthat open.
A relational thinking helped mework through.

Kyle (17:19):
So some of our listeners might be thinking but you, why
go that far if those are yourconcerns?
Right, because it's not thathard to be a quote-unquote
classical theist and think thatGod is loving, that God does not
condone bashing babies againstrocks, all the things you just
rattled off.
You can take quote-unquoteprogressive for lack of a better

(17:41):
word positions on those thingsand still be firmly ensconced
within classical theism.
There's a long tradition ofmystics and a side to you know,
christian theology that is verycompatible with views that we
would feel more comfortable withabout those issues.
That is still within the boundsof historic orthodoxy, so to

(18:05):
speak.
That isn't quote unquote openand relational.
That doesn't, for example,think that God is a omnipotent,
or that doesn't think that Godis in process of evolution or
that doesn't think that all thethings that are distinctive of
open and relational thinkers.
You don't have to go that farto deal with the kind of stuff
you were just naming there dealwith the kind of stuff you were
just naming there.
So where do you think classicaltheism classical in the sense of

(18:36):
maybe we should define ourterms here but, like when I tell
my students what classicaltheism is it's this view of God
that is shared for most of thehistory of the major thinkers of
the Abrahamic religion.
So it's not just Christian,it's also Islamic and it's also
Jewish, and there's lots ofdisagreements between all those
thinkers, obviously, but you dokind of get this convergence of
views about what a God would be,particularly a thing that could
create the world and that couldinspire the Abrahamic religions

(18:59):
, and there's lots of roomwithin that for all of these
kinds of conversations.
So where do you think that kindof view of God hits a boundary
where you actually have to crossit and say no?
In the US, one guy named PaulTillich.

Tom (19:29):
Paul Tillich was a liberal theologian who didn't believe in
hell.
He didn't believe in anintervening God.
He also didn't think God waspersonal in the sense of giving
and receiving in a loverelationship.
He said that God's attributeswere symbols rather than
straightforward descriptions ofwho God was.
And then he does a move that alot of theologians have done,

(19:51):
has talked about God infinitelytranscending the finite being,
which places God in a kind ofplace that can't be comprehended
.
God becomes incomprehensible andone of the things that open,
relational theology does is saysyou know, we're not going to
appeal to mystery left and right, we're not going to put God in

(20:13):
this supra, outside of time andspace and metaphysical
categories.
It doesn't mean God's going tobe exactly like you and me, but
there's going to be someanalogies between the personal
lover of the universe and us aspersonal lovers.
So that personal side of thingsis one major source, positive

(20:36):
source, I think, in the open andrelational community.
The second I'll point to DavidBentley Hart, who I was recently
seeing one of his interviewsand he's, you know, he's pretty
sure of himself in terms of histheology.
But in one of I thought I wantedto give David credit kudos here
he just bluntly said I don'thave a solution to the problem

(20:59):
of evil.
And I said good for you, David,because we do in the open and
relational community, can't?
You might not like it, youmight not like the fact that we
don't think God is omnipotent,because of whatever implications
you think that it might have,but at least we are offering a
solution to the number onereason people say they can't

(21:20):
believe in God.
Now again, david might say thestakes or the what we give up is
too high for the rewards we get.
I don't think it is.
But those are two ways in whichan open, relational vision, I
think, overcomes real obstaclesof two other major theologians
of the last 100 years or so.

Randy (21:42):
And to be clear and fair, when we talk about open and
relational theology and Kyle'skind of framing it as a severe
departure from classical theism,I don't know if that's how
you're framing it, kyle.
I'm sorry if that's amischaracterization of your
words, but just in case there'sany kind of misnomers out there,
what we're talking about is not, I don't think, aberrant or

(22:04):
heretical.
We're not talking about like ahuge departure of the
Christology and like the who andwhat God is and how God works,
like all of that.
It's to me it's like wellwithin the camp of orthodoxy.
It's just a new way of adifferent and new way of
thinking about God.
In some of these ways thatmight be helpful.
That's the way I would put it.

Tom (22:25):
I think so too.
I don't want to say that openand relational theology is
exactly what the Bible saysabout God, but I do think the
general vision of God in openand relational thinking better
fits the general vision of Godin scripture than the classical
God who's immutable, impassableoutside of time, yada, yada,

(22:49):
yada.
Again, I'm not saying it's aone-to-one correspondence
between our view and the Bible,but I think we do a better job
of handling the major themes.
And you know there's going tobe some versions of, there's a
varieties of open and relationaltheologies and there's going to
be some under that big umbrellathat people might think is

(23:10):
further from orthodoxy thanothers.
But at least the one I want totry to present tonight I think
is in the umbrella of orthodoxy.

Kyle (23:21):
And that is not a concern for this podcast just so we're
clear there of us.

Tom (23:25):
Yeah, no, that's not an objection for this podcast.
Just so we're clear.

Randy (23:28):
yeah, no, that's one one, you're gonna hear one in one
more in particular than theother.
But, yes, I would agree withthat.

Kyle (23:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's funny because I'm probably, of
the three of us, the one whothinks it's the most unorthodox
and also the one who probablycares the least.

Randy (23:41):
I would agree with both of those statements.
Yes.

Kyle (23:47):
So one thing, and I'll let Randy ask some stuff.
So you've mentioned a couple oftimes things that made me think
about anthropomorphism, whichI'll define here Thinking of God
through the lens of what humannature is like, order to image

(24:08):
or to conceive of or totheologize about a divine being,
a creator, anything like that.
We have to in some sense thinkof it analogously or
metaphorically to our ownexperience.
Maybe we can't get outside ofthat, maybe that's the only
option that we have.
But anthropomorphism has been asignificant sticking point in
theology, to put it very mildly,and there's a couple of times.
Obviously there's like anextremely naive way to do this,

(24:29):
and you dismiss those in yourbook as you should.
I won't name any names, butthere are traditions that do
this very explicitly, and theyprobably shouldn't, because that
kind of extremely naive God hasa body and it probably has a
penis, and that doesn't stand upto scrutiny.
But there are forms ofanthropomorphism that you seem

(24:51):
to flirt with, if not embrace tosome extent, in your book, and
so I just want you to talk alittle bit about that and then
afterward I'm going to have alarger question about method.
Kyle, can you give us an exampleof how Tom leansans heavily
into anthropomorphism I wouldn'tsay heavily okay, but so at
love is a maybe the best example.
Great, and this is not acritique.

(25:12):
Okay, this is a genuinequestion of you, because it's
something I'm still thinkingthrough too.
I'm one of those people whothinks that there's no getting
out of the anthropomorphicbucket so to speak, we're, we're
in that boat.
We are human beings.
I'm also a kantian in many waysand so like, okay, we, we have
the forms of intuition that wegot and we got to do the best we
can, okay.
So, um, this is not a critique,but like, if I'm going to think

(25:32):
about love and I'm going to tryto define love and then I'm
going to try to apply that togod, I don't know how to do it
other than thinking about humanrelationships that I think about
as loving.
And there's lots of humanrelationships that we use that
word for and some of them Ithink are worthy of the term and
some of them I don't.
And in other places I recognizegenuine, reasonable
disagreement about it, where Imight not be able to as easily

(25:55):
see a certain kind ofrelationship as loving as
another human being could.
And so there's this spectrum ofpotential human experiences of
love, and if I'm going to thinkof God as loving, god is love.
I don't even know how tocoherent sentence if I can't
compare it to something thathumans have experienced.
So I want you to say whyanthropomorphism is okay.

(26:17):
If it is, and under whatcircumstances.
And when it's not, like wheredo you run into that line where
we probably shouldn't do thatanymore?
And when it's?

Tom (26:23):
not like where do you run into that line where we probably
shouldn't do that anymore?
Yeah well, I like to begin theconversation about
anthropomorphism by looking atthe two extremes, and you've
mentioned one of them.
We'll call it the Kyle.
Whitaker is the same as Godextreme.

Kyle (26:40):
Yeah, God just happens to turn out with all of my opinions
.

Randy (26:44):
Exactly, we hope and pray .

Tom (26:44):
That's very extreme, and your hair and your background
and your biases and you knowyour size and whatever.

Randy (26:51):
The hair is probably maybe right.

Tom (26:56):
So you know there's not many people you know who are
going to go all the way downthat road.
You've got some traditions,like the Mormon tradition, that
have a God with an actual body,but they still have some other
differences between me and thatGod.
At the other extreme is thenotion that God has absolutely

(27:18):
nothing in common with you andme, not only in terms of body,
but in terms of thinking andmind and actions and love.
Well, I like to call thatabsolute apophaticism.
There's nothing we can say,think, even dream of that's
anything close to what God islike.
And you can find major thinkersin the past and the present who

(27:41):
will say things that sound anawful lot like that absolute
apophatic move.
Now, when you talk with themlong enough, they'll cheat and
they'll bring in some positivestatements in the back door, but
they usually start withsomething like that to try to
make sure they avoidanthropomorphism.
I think my position is going tobe between those two extremes

(28:02):
and going to be guided by thenotion that if I'm going to have
any intuitions about what Godmight be like, I'm bound to use
finite words and categories.
But when using those finitewords and categories, I want to
ask myself.
Can these particular dimensions, can they place the kind of

(28:28):
limits on God that I think willcause real problems when other
issues come up?
So, for instance, many times inscripture people say they heard
God's voice.
Well, does that mean that Godhas literal vocal cords?
I don't think so.
My Mormon friends would say yes, at least maybe not in every

(28:52):
instance, but they think Godreally has vocal cords.
So I'm gonna reject that kindof anthropomorphic move.
But I think God can communicate, not not because God has vocal
cords.
I think God is an entity withcausal powers upon creation,

(29:15):
including the transfer ofinformation.
So in that way I'm going to usemore metaphysically
straightforward language to talkabout God as a communicator,
even though I'm going to denythat God has an actual vocal
cord.
Or we've mentioned love.
So let me go to a different one.
Here's a good one Acting.

(29:35):
I think God is a real agent inthe universe, but I think God is
a universal agent rather thanone with a localized body.
So if I go out and hit abaseball, I'm using my body as
an agent in one place to exertcausation on the ball as it goes
through the air.
I don't think God can do that.

(29:57):
I don't think God can hit abaseball, but I think God is an
actor who exerts influence onall entities whatsoever in every
universe that exists.
So the category, themetaphysical category of acting,
I think, is analogous betweenGod and creation.
So that's the kind of way Istart kind of working through
these issues.
I don't know that I have arigid set of guidelines that I

(30:23):
can employ in every instance,but that's how I kind of think
through the anthropomorphicobjections that people raise.

Kyle (30:32):
Yeah, that's helpful and it's good that you're writing a
systematic theology.
It gives you an excellentopportunity to work through this
.

Randy (30:39):
It seems like the kind of thing.

Kyle (30:40):
A guy who's doing that needs to have an answer to.

Randy (30:44):
So let me ask real quick of both of you how would you
feel with?
Um?
This is now well thought out,but um, god is not a human.
But we could say god was ahuman in in christ right and
almost not.
The scriptures, the newtestament in particular, kind of
want us to think.
It seems like that if you wantto know what god's like, you
look at jesus.
If you want to know what God'slike, you look at Jesus.

(31:05):
If you want to know what God,you know how God relates to
humans, you look at Jesus.
If you want to know what God,you know all the things Hebrews
1, john 1, colossians 1, all thehigh Christology spots in
scripture.
So is that an anthropomorphismor is that just saying God has
revealed God's self in Jesus, inthe person of Christ, as fully

(31:26):
and richly as we will have?
Where does that sit within thisconversation, guys?

Tom (31:36):
Yeah, it's hard because I at least and I'm guessing you
guys are with me on this I wantto say a lot of things about God
that I don't want to say aboutJesus.
I think God's omnipresent,don't think Jesus was.
I think God knows everythingthat's knowable.
I think Jesus is prettyignorant.
Jesus didn't know aboutevolution, I'll bet.
I think there's lots of thingsthat I want to say about God
that I don't want to say aboutJesus to Nazarene.
However, I'm quite impressedwith the things Jesus said and

(32:01):
did.
That I think might tell us thetruth about God's loving nature.
So I'm just fine saying thisparticular individual best
reveals God's love better thananybody else, and that's why
he's at the center of theChristian tradition.
But I don't want to put well, Idon't want to make God

(32:24):
corporeal or have a body justbecause Jesus of Nazareth had a
body.
So those are the kind of thingsI try to wrestle through.

Randy (32:32):
Good you comfortable with all that, Kyle.

Kyle (32:37):
I think so.
Yeah, I would just say inresponse to your question that
it's difficult to formulate acoherent Christian notion of
Jesus as divine if you take thatabsolute anthropomorphic stance
.
So if I say Jesus is God,there's a prior idea that I'm

(32:58):
using there of what the referentof the term God is, and it
can't just be Jesus.
Otherwise I'm saying Jesus isJesus and that's meaningless.
That's what we call ittautology and philosophy.
So there's something else goingon there, and however we've
defined that thing such that wecan recognize Jesus as being its
referent, we already have somekind of prior concept.

(33:22):
And the question then becomeswhere did that concept derive
from?

Tom (33:28):
Or how do we define it?
Or?

Kyle (33:30):
how do we build a method such that it has the content we
want it to have, or it has thecontent it ought to have for the
kind of thing that it is in ourtheorizing, without it sneaking
in content that we don't wantit to have?

Randy (33:42):
Yeah.

Kyle (33:43):
Like physical bodies and maleness and long hair and stuff
like that, Yep orcapriciousness or you know, all
the stuff that the Greeks had intheir deities.
We don't want that stuff.
We want to think that ours ismore sophisticated, that it gets
at something real, that we haveevidence for it, that it's the.
It's the inference to some, orit's the conclusion of many

(34:07):
inferences, that we think arereasonable to draw, so I think
one.

Tom (34:09):
Oh, sorry.

Kyle (34:10):
No, go ahead, because I'm going to slightly change the
subject.

Tom (34:12):
Good, Okay, I'll just say one quick thing.
I think a really common viewamong Christians is to say that
Jesus is God, but that Jesus setaside a bunch of divine
attributes temporarily whileJesus was on earth.
And there's a lot of problemswith that view, but it's a very
common one.

(34:33):
If we go that route and we saythe human man Jesus set aside
divine attributes, then we can'talso say that human man Jesus
tells us the truth about all thedivine attributes because we
don't see him revealed in thatguy tells us the truth about all
the divine attributes becausewe don't see him revealed in
that guy.
So, uh, this is a a claim thatI think has some problems, but
it's a very common one amongstchristians and born in many ways

(34:55):
out of philippines too.

Randy (34:56):
And yeah, um, let's move on.
Kyle, sorry to dick, take usthat deep.
Yeah, no worries.

Kyle (35:02):
I was going to just ask and honestly, probably we should
just bracket this and talkabout it at a later date.
But like I'm always interestedin people's approach to method
because I'm a philosopher, welike to think about method, but
particularly theological method,and I know that's a whole can
of worms.
But like you're writing asystematic theology, so if
anybody's thinking about this,it's you.
So, like, what is the right wayto approach thinking about what

(35:24):
God is, such that we mightconclude that something like
open and relational theology isthe best contender amongst all
the other options?
I'm an agnostic, and part ofthe reason for it is I can't
think of one.
I can't think of good reasonsto rule out certain kinds of
methods over others with respectto that question.
So we don't have to dive intothat right now, but if you have

(35:44):
anything, you want to say.

Tom (35:45):
I'll say a couple of words.
One of the things I'll say isthat, Kyle, I've put my
methodology at the end of thebook.

Kyle (35:55):
So that tells you how important I think it is.
Volume three I'm going to haveto wait.
How many years.

Tom (35:57):
Yep, the end of the volume three.
But a couple of quick things.
I think the opening relationalcamp draws from a variety of
sources, and I think the openingrelational camp draws from a
variety of sources and dependingon the person they might put
more weight on one source overanother.
But what they share in commonis, I think we're all
fallibilists, so none of usthink there's one inerrant

(36:20):
source, be it a person, a bookor whatever, a church.
So we're all fallibilists and Ithink we all have a particular
emphasis upon lived experienceand the reasoning from
experience.
Not that other traditions don't, but I think we oftentimes say
no, I'm not going to believethat, because it doesn't make

(36:42):
any sense or that can't be true,because no one actually lives
that way.
So those kinds of thingsprobably raise up a little
higher in the source list thanin other theological approaches.

Kyle (36:58):
Yeah, that's really helpful, thanks.
Speaks to my Pentecostalbackground pretty strongly.

Randy (37:20):
All right, randy, take it away.
That's right.
You don't have to convert me torelational.
I'm there so I don't know 25years ago, when these arguments
were new to me and novel to me.
One of the big reasons and datapoints I heard from Open Theism
why you want to adopt this wayof thinking about God is because

(37:41):
of what it does to prayer,right?
Because if we think and believethat the future is already
determined by God, what in theworld are we doing when we pray?
And especially if we think thatour prayers affect something
because that obviously is itcan't work together.
If the future is fixed, thenprayer is meaningless for
influencing and shaping thefuture by influencing God, right

(38:03):
?
Am I okay so far, tom?

Tom (38:06):
Yep, yep.
Okay, that's a common argument,and that's not like a
controversial or heterodoxconclusion.

Kyle (38:12):
That's like Aquinas thought that.
So, just so our listeners areclear.
Long tradition of significanttheologians thinking prayer is
not efficacious.

Randy (38:22):
It's doing something else in the world, but it ain't
changing anything, and so, withopen theism, you say, well, the
future can't be settled, becausethe future literally doesn't
exist until we create it.
Like right now we're creatingit.
As we talk, speak, have thisconversation, billions of people
, whatever.
To me, though, that started asa data point of like, oh yeah,

(38:47):
actually I'm going to put thatin the column of open theism,
but it's moved to the pointwhere I just think why do we
need it?
Helps with the idea if we'retrying to convince one another
that prayer actually matters andthat what we ask God for God
actually considers, and maybewe'll change things in response
to our prayers.

(39:07):
It's helpful just in thatquestion, in that camp of does
prayer matter?
Does prayer work?
Is prayer efficacious?
But I don't know if that's agood enough reason to say maybe
the future is settled, and I'msure you would say, well, that's
not our whole argument,obviously, but to me it kind of
has felt like we got thisproblem with prayer.

(39:29):
So let's have our explanationand our idea of time and the
future and reality match up in away that makes our prayer more
efficacious, useful, effectiveor whatever, and to me that's
just not worth doing.
For me, I'd rather hold prayeras mystery and say I don't know

(39:53):
if our prayer actually doesanything.
I believe deep down, somehow itdoes on occasion.
I don't know how it works, butI feel deep within me and I feel
like I've seen in my life waymore non-answered prayers, but
some answered prayers, someprayer that seems like something
changed, something intervenedin order to change the outcome.

(40:15):
I'm okay with just leaving itthere and saying but I don't
know and I don't think we'llever know, and I think prayer is
more for us than it is forother people the future,
changing reality, whatever.
So to me that's just become anargument or a data point.
That just to me doesn't matter,because I'd rather hold prayer.

(40:36):
For me, prayer is moremysterious, mystical, and it
does something to me.

Kyle (40:41):
Tell me your thoughts on what I just said Before you
answer, can I piggyback on thisfor one second really quickly,
because I think it has to dowith our theological method
conversation?
Actually, because I havenoticed when I read open and
relational people, open theisticpeople not across the board,
but it's a thing that I'venoticed.
I noticed it in this book.
There's an element of it.
Sometimes it feels a little adhoc, in the sense of we have all

(41:10):
these problems and we're goingto come up with like the perfect
theory that satisfies all ofthem, and especially when we're
like a little bit proselytizingit, which your book is aimed at,
people who are, you know,already have theological hangups
and they're looking forsomething.
So more power to you.
But like there is a little bitof this that I've, since I think
that Randy is getting out ofwhere we have the perfect
solution for that and we'vetheorized it just so you know.
What do you think about that?

(41:30):
Is that unfair?

Tom (41:31):
I'm sure I'm guilty of that Cause I think opening
relational theology is the bestmodel of God on offer, and I'm,
you know, talking about it anawful lot.

Randy (41:40):
Why wouldn't you, why would you be writing books if
you weren't convinced of it?

Tom (41:48):
I'd like to think you're an authentic human being, right?
I'm not going to, randy, thoughtry to change your mind about
the prayer issue.
I want to point to two issuesthat I think are related to the
prayer issue but actually mighthave more purchase on you.
You might think is moresignificant.
The first one is the questionof whether or not Randy's life

(42:12):
makes any difference to God.
See, I think that's at theheart of the prayer question,
not whether or not we're goingto convince God to do something
different than God might haveotherwise did.
I think the heart of thequestion is does anything we do
have any effect on God in thefuture?
And if God is the ultimatereality and God's will is done,

(42:36):
but God is above time, itdoesn't seem like our lives have
any true significance.
However, in an open andrelational framework in which
we're having an effect on Godand what our actions do really
do make a difference and God isaffected by us, then our lives
can have real significance andmeaning, I think in a way that

(42:58):
the classical theist can't say alittle more philosophical.
You've probably thought aboutit, but an open theist like me
will say if the future issettled, then it's hard to see
how our notions of freedom makeany sense If God knows the

(43:18):
future with absolute certainty.
God seems to only be able to dothat if that future is complete
, settled and fixed.
But a complete, settled andfixed future doesn't seem to
have options for us to freelychoose, so that's more of a
theoretical thing.
But I think for many people whowork through that question and
come out the other side and opentheist, they feel like this

(43:41):
great freeing, a sense offreedom that you know, yeah, now
these intuitions I have, that Imake choices.
That actually tells me thetruth about the way things
really are.
I really do make free choicesand my free choices affect the
God of the universe.
How awesome is that, um, sowhat do you think of that, randy

(44:02):
?

Randy (44:05):
I like it.
Hmm, yes, I like it and at thesame time and I don't want to
have a conversation where I'mlike, but I said, you know.
However, I mean, the prayerpart is like a data point within
your book.
And it's that part in particularto me feels a little bit—and

(44:29):
this is a question that I hadlater that basically Kyle just
asked—but that's one layer ofdiscomfort.
I make sense right, like I dothink our theology should be

(44:51):
sensible and logical and not,like you know, water equals gas.
That's a bad, terrible analogy,but you hear what I'm saying.
It's like you can't tellsomeone we're free agents and
then say but God determineseverything.
Like those two things don'twork together.
So in that sense I do reallyappreciate open and relational

(45:12):
theology because it does helpmake sense of a lot of things
that seem nonsensical within theclassical theism.
However, it feels almost alittle bit too convenient.
It feels a little bit too muchlike scroll down your Rolodex,
ask any question you want, andI've got an answer for you from
open and relational theology,because we thought of that too.
It kind of feels like acommercial.

Kyle (45:35):
This might be like a psychological thing we need to
unpack, because both of us atsome point in our past were like
enamored a little bit with likeapologetic approaches to
theology.
I know I was.
I think Randy probably was alittle bit too, and that's
something we've had to outgrow.
So anything that feels a littletoo self-assured or a little

(45:55):
too confident or a little tooeasy explanation for too many
things makes our hackles go up.

Randy (45:58):
So we might be putting that on you a little bit.
I love it.
Yeah, just a little bit, andI'm sorry, tom, I'm sorry.

Tom (46:04):
No, that's okay, this won't assuage your concerns entirely,
but maybe I should have startedby saying I don't know that
anything I'm saying today iscertainly correct.
I mean, I'm putting outproposals I think make the best
sense, so it's not like I'mpulling them out of my butt
tonight, just winging it.

(46:26):
But on the other hand, I'm oneof these people who doesn't
think I can know any of the mostimportant things in life with
certainty.
So these are proposals, theseare speculative moves, so if
they come across as a little tooneat and clean, sorry about
that.

Randy (46:44):
No, no, not at all, and I appreciate you.
No, no, not at all.
And I appreciate you Like Ithink these are the questions
that people are wrestling with,as you said in your book, and
you highlighted all thesequestions that people have in
hypothetical conversations, andsome of them probably real,
because you hear from a lot ofpeople who have a lot of issues
with our classical historicalidea of God, and I love that we
have people like you, tom, whoare trying to get further closer

(47:07):
to the bottom of some of thesearguments and conversations
throughout history, and I thinkthat's really, really important.
I love it.
It's just like Kyle said whenit feels like there's too many
answers, then all of a sudden itfeels a little bit like okay,
just mathematics-wise, thisseems like too much.

Kyle (47:26):
It seems unlikely that we've.
One time I was at a talk givenby Richard Swinburne, who is a
open theist of a different sort,and made a joke.
The room thought it was a joke.
He apparently did not thatsomeone once asked him because
he's also well known for doing alot of statistical modeling.

(47:46):
When, when God's existence isinvolved and he's like somebody
once asked me, what are the oddsthat I would have been born
with all the correct opinions,and the room laughed and he's
like but there you have it.
And he moved on because he'salso like notoriously never
changed his mind about anything.
That's awful, yeah.

Tom (48:05):
Let me I do think, though, there might be one more comment
here.
There might be, I think everytheology, if it's consistent, if
it's rationally consistent, isprobably going to have to make
some adjustments in traditionalways of thinking.

(48:29):
That will make some peoplenervous, like, for instance,
with my view.
I'm very clear that God is notomnipotent, but part of what I
give up is a guaranteed divinevictory through omnipotence at
the eschaton unguenting divinevictory through omnipotence at

(48:52):
the eschaton so, um, you know,and that's something big to give
up, it is, it's big to give.
I mean it's too big for lots andlots of books yeah it's right,
yeah, it's right yeah I stillthink there's the hope of that
universal reconciliation, but itcan't come through omnipotence.
If my views are consistent, andso I don't think that.
So saying that, I guess, is myway of saying it.
I might say I've got the answerto this, that and the other,

(49:14):
but I admit there are somethings I'm going to rethink
radically and they're going tomake some people nervous.

Randy (49:22):
And some of your, some of your current conclusions open
up other questions.

Tom (49:27):
It sounds like you're willing to accept that Sure sure
yeah.

Kyle (49:30):
Yeah, this is one of the things I'd also like to point
out to my students, or did backin the day when I was able to
teach philosophy, and it goesfor theology just as well, like
the practice of studying thesekinds of things.
One of the great things it doesfor you is seeing how, when you
push on one part of a web ofsystem or a web of beliefs or a
theory, how it moves the otherparts.
Like everything costs something, right, there's no free lunch

(49:52):
here.
So I think considering openrelational theology specifically
is a wonderful exercise in that, because it's like okay, here's
the thing I really hate aboutthe classical conception of God.
What if I just give it up?
And it's not an easy answerbecause it's there for a reason.
Those people were super smart.
It's not an easy answer becauseit's there for a reason those
people were super smart.
So if we're going to remove thatpiece, another piece is going
to have to shift as well.

Tom (50:10):
And they had certain assumptions that I might not
share.
Yeah, I was going to add onecaveat, and that is if you push
on one place, something overhere changes.
If you're a person who wants arationally consistent theology I
think most of the world is inthat place I'm there, I want a
rationally consistent theology.
I think most of the world isn'tin that place.
I'm there, I want a rationallyconsistent.

(50:30):
But one of my good friends wholikes to say he's a Kalminian,
an Arminian, a Calvinist, and Ijust say no, you're an idiot,
you're just misinformed.
You don't have a consistenttheology.

Kyle (50:41):
I grant the theoretical possibility, but I seriously
doubt your ability to pull itoff.

Tom (50:46):
Let's find out theoretical possibility, but I seriously
doubt your ability to pull itoff?

Randy (50:49):
Let's find out.
Yeah, so, tom, let's just kindof give our listeners an example
who haven't read the book Iknow some of our listeners have,
but many haven't and just givethem a little example of how you
kind of dump on classicalnotions of theology a little bit
.
You dedicate almost, maybealmost, or an entire chapter to

(51:10):
kind of dumping on Augustine,which I'm here for.
To be honest with you, I thinkmore of us need to dump on
Augustine and no offense, godbless you, augustine, but I got
some issues with your theologyas well.
Give us a little bit like loveand Augustine and the idea.
Just give us a little bit oflike.
This notion of divine love thatwe've been given might be a

(51:35):
little bit incomplete andactually nonsensical and
illogical.
Can you just take our listenersinto that world a little bit?

Tom (51:44):
Yeah, first, let me begin by saying we all know that love
has many different meanings inour everyday life, and it's true
in Scripture as well, but inthe tradition.
So love has a diversity ofmeanings.
One prominent and I would argue, by far the most dominant
meaning of love in Scripture issomething to the effect of doing

(52:05):
what's good for others orpromoting their well-being,
blessedness, abundant life.
It's acting for the good ofothers.
Augustine thinks that love isabout desire, which is another
way we use love in our everydayworld.
I love pizza, you know, I lovethe Kansas City Chiefs.
That's a kind of seeing valuein something and desiring it.

(52:28):
But because Augustine thinks oflove as desire, he then puts
that on to God and says okay,what does God's love look like?
Well, you'd think that God'slove would be desiring.
But Augustine says hold on asecond.
God doesn't want to desireanything that's less than

(52:48):
perfectly desirable.
So therefore, god must loveGod's self.
God can't love us in the senseof desiring us, because we're
not the most valuable.
Only God is, in the end loves,only God's self.

(53:10):
And to be worse, we aresupposed to set our desires on
what is perfectly desirable.
So we ought to love God, butloving neighbor?
Well, they're not perfectlydesirable.
Maybe we can love God throughour neighbor, but we can't love
our neighbor as for their ownsake, because they're not the
ultimate of value.
And so you have this reallytwisted way of thinking about
love.
At least the ways that don'tmesh with things like for God so

(53:31):
loved the world that he gavehis only begotten son, or love
one another as I have loved you.
You got this really strange wayof thinking about love based
upon an assumption of love asdesire, rather than acting for
the good or the well-being ofothers.

Randy (53:49):
When I think of Christian's idea of love, I
think of it's problematic.
To be honest with you, it'skind of it's part of the reason
why it took me a long time tocome over to the affirming camp,
because when I talk about loveI'm talking about something in
specific as a Christian right,but it's my, I would say, and I

(54:14):
don't think this is supercontroversial, not with the
three of us.
But a Christian concept of lovecan be and I want to say, a
Western, evangelical, protestantconception of love might be way
, way, way too thin andinadequate to even put the idea
of love, or let alone agape love, which you go into a little bit

(54:34):
in your book as well, what I'msaying here.
Would you say that I'm beingtoo hard on Western Protestant
Christians, or would you saywe've been given a concept of
love that is kind of thin, cheapand doesn't really kind of
encompass what we're talkingabout, what we're supposed to be
talking about when we talkabout agape, self-sacrificial,

(54:54):
others-oriented, unconditionallove.
Does what I just said makesense?
I hope it does.

Tom (55:00):
I think so.
I would say love in scripturetakes a lot of different forms.
I have a academic book calledthorough form love where I not
only look at agape but phileaand the meaning of eros even
though the word eros is in thescripture and the hebrew words
ahava and hesed and others.
Anyway, love takes many formsin scripture.

(55:22):
I think what you're pointing toas an inadequate notion of love
today, I would at least say, isusually portrayed as easy goes,
anything kind of goes.
If I'm going to love someone,I'm not going to hold them

(55:44):
accountable to the good, but I'mjust going to let things slide.
And that kind of love, I think,is real problems.
Because, as I see it, love aimsfor well-being and that means
that sometimes, to use yourlanguage, it has to be
self-sacrificial Not all thetime, but sometimes.
Sometimes it's really hard,other times it's pretty easy.

(56:05):
I can act for the well-being ofmy grandchildren pretty easily
when they're cute and cuddly,but when they're throwing a
temper tantrum, then I got touse a different kind of love.
It's still love because I carefor their well-being, but it's a
love that makes me put aside mynegative emotions toward them
and do what I think is best forthem, and so if love is a kind

(56:27):
of anything goes way of thinking, which is for many people in
the West, then I'm opposed tothat.
I think we have to define lovein ways that act for well-being
more clearly.

Randy (56:46):
What I'm getting at is we can go both sides of it, like
in your grandparent analogy.
There's there's many Christianswho historically and currently,
would say what they would calllove, what many people should
call abuse.
Right.

Tom (56:58):
Yeah.

Randy (56:58):
Yeah, there's one.
That's one extreme.
But then the other is saying Ilove you or not?
Even the other extreme.
It's just, both are extremes.
I love you or not, even theother extreme.
It's just, both are extremes.
I love you and that's why I'mcutting you out of our family.
Because for me to love you as akid who just told, or a
15-year-old who just told meyou're gay, for me to be the
most loving parent in the worldmeans that I'm going to have to

(57:20):
kick you out of our house, I'mgoing to have to cut you out of
our family.
I'm going to have to treat youlike a sinner, like you're not
in the church, because that'swhat I've been told love looks
like.
And what I'm trying to say ismaybe we've been given a very,
very shallow, ugly picture ofwhat love looks like, because
maybe it goes all the way backto Augustine.

(57:40):
That's kind of what I waspicking up on, what I've already
felt a little bit, and I feltlike you gave me a little
permission in your book.
Tell me about that.

Tom (57:49):
Yeah, yeah, I can see what you're saying.
The example you give, I think,has a lot to do with people who
think that love means obeyingwhat they think God commands.
So they go to the Bible.
They think homosexuality, queer, lgbt, transgender that's

(58:11):
sinful.
The Bible says so.
Since God is a God of love andwants me to love, I need to obey
that.
Therefore, I'm kicking my kidout of the house.
Most of those people aren'tasking the question what's
really fundamentally good forthe kids' psychological and
mental and emotional well-being?

(58:31):
They're not asking thequestions of well-being.
Most of them are asking thequestions of what does it mean
to be obedient to the God who?
I think Scripture says queerthings are wrong.
That's a different part of theChristian tradition than
Augustine are wrong.
That's a different part of theChristian tradition than
Augustine.
That's a tradition of well.
You find it more infundamentalism and Lutheranism

(58:54):
and some parts of Lutheranism.
So this shit.

Randy (58:59):
what I would call a shallow idea or picture of love,
you would say, is probably notrooted in Augustine, it's
probably rooted somewhere elsewith somebody else, yeah, okay,
yeah sorry about that whole 10minute little sidetrack.
Um it makes me.

Kyle (59:16):
It makes me want to talk to you more about love in a
separate conversation probablywell, you know what let's do.

Tom (59:21):
let me send you guys copies of my book pluriform love,
which is a more academic thing,and and I get into all the
biblical stuff and the Greekphilosophy and all that, and we
can go after that.
What do you think of that idea?

Kyle (59:33):
I would love that.
Yeah, Because one of the thingsthat's always struck me about
agape, and like the kind of lovethat Jesus seems to have
practiced, is the particularityof it.
This has come up on our podcastbefore recently and like it's
easy that that version offundamentalist love is easy to
knock over.
But there are moresophisticated forms of it and
it's not hard to think ofutilitarian justifications, for

(59:56):
example, for that kind ofbehavior where I am interested
in the wellbeing, just not thewellbeing of that individual,
because the wellbeing of thecollective is more important and
that's what this kind of ruleyou know, the rule the Bible
here is just to stand in for acertain kind of rule.
That kind of rule guaranteesthe well-being of the collective
.
It's a rule, utilitarianismthat's at work in that kind of

(01:00:18):
justification.
So if we're going to say love isother than that, then we're I
think we're suggesting thatdivine love has to be particular
, and I'm very interested in thejustification for that, because
it seems true to me.
And yet, methodologically again, why?
Would we prioritize that oversome kind of collective.

Tom (01:00:35):
Let me be nerdy just for a second here.
It could be that God caresabout the well-being of the
whole, the common good, butbecause God's intimately related
to each entity and by nature bynecessity acts for the good of
the individual, that God hasboth spheres in mind and can't

(01:00:57):
make a decision that excludesthe good of the individual for
the good of the whole, but couldcall the individual to
self-sacrifice for the good ofthe whole, but can't impose that
on the individual.

Randy (01:01:12):
So, tom, our time is winding down and we have
literally like half of ouroutline still to go.
Would you be okay, would you becomfortable with doing a little
bit of a lightning round andbeing on the hot seat?
We're going to ask you somequestions that deserve way more
than 60 second answers, butwe're asking you to give us 60
second answers.
Can you do that?

Tom (01:01:29):
I'll give it my best shot.

Kyle (01:01:31):
All right.
I think we have to put a ruleon ourselves that we can't
object or respond for furtherclarification.

Randy (01:01:36):
That's fair, you take those.
This will never work.

Tom (01:01:38):
This is going to be carte blanche here.
I'll start every answer withand Kyle believes what I'm about
to say.

Kyle (01:01:44):
He and Kyle believes what I'm about to say.

Tom (01:01:45):
He agrees with this.
Randy knows I'm right aboutthis.

Kyle (01:01:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, number one, you ready.
Yep Is creation ex nihilo.
Why or why not?

Tom (01:01:57):
No, it's not ex nihilo.
I think God everlastinglycreates out of that which God
previously created and there isno absolute beginning previously
created and there was noabsolute beginning.
Kratu ex nihilo is not inscripture and was introduced by
Gnostics and is a major problemin the Christian and Jewish and
Muslim traditions.

Randy (01:02:19):
Man, I'm so excited to just keep moving and drive all
our listeners nuts.

Kyle (01:02:22):
I'm holding it in.
I'm holding it in.

Randy (01:02:24):
And our co-host.
Keep it going, Kyle.

Kyle (01:02:27):
Number two what is omnipresence?
You have a big problem withomnipotence, but you like
omnipresence.
In my mind they are verysimilar.
What is omnipresence?

Tom (01:02:37):
Omnipresence, as I see it, is just God being directly
present to every creature andentity in the entire universe
without being that creature.
So it's not pantheism.
I think of omnipotence, atleast as classically understood,
as one of three possibilitiesEither God controls every entity
, or God could control andoccasionally does, or God can do

(01:03:02):
anything.
So I see omnipresence andomnipotence as distinct.

Kyle (01:03:11):
So since you mentioned pantheism, that'll, that'll be
my next one.
Okay, you, you have a whole Ithink it's a whole chapter in
the book.
It's been a while since Ifinished it.
On panentheism yeah, it's atleast a big focus we.
I wanted to talk about that atlength.
We're not going to have time,so so distinguish for our
listeners pantheism, panentheism, classical theism, other kinds
of theism, if you want, and tellus why you think panentheism is

(01:03:33):
the way to go.

Tom (01:03:36):
First of all, there's a variety of meanings of
panentheism.
I'm going to tell you which oneI think is the best, but you
might hear some otheralternatives from other people.
Pantheism is the idea thateverything that is is God.
There's no difference betweenGod and creation.
Classical theism has not onlywanted to make sure there's a

(01:03:57):
difference between God andcreation, but also has says that
God is impassable, unaffected,not directly relationally
affected, by what goes on.
Panentheism says that all ofcreation is in God, not in the
sense of being in a bucket, butbeing in God's experience, Just

(01:04:20):
like I'm in your experienceright now as a listener or
viewer.
I'm affecting you.
But panentheism says not onlyhumans affect God, but
everything that exists affectGod's experience.

Randy (01:04:34):
And the way I've heard panentheism, which I would
consider myself in that camp.
I've heard it said that God isin all things Rather than all
things being in God.
God is in all things than allthings being in God.
God is in all things.
Is there a functionaldifference there?

Tom (01:04:51):
Difference between God being in all things and all
things being in God.

Randy (01:04:54):
Correct.
Is it just the same way ofsaying the same, different way
of saying the same thing?

Tom (01:04:58):
They're saying different things.
Okay, yeah, to say that God isin all things is to say that God
affects all creation,influences all creation at all
times.
To say all things are in godsis saying everything affects god
.
A lot of classical theists aregoing to say god affects all of
creation, but they're not goingto say creation affects god in

(01:05:20):
the sense of influencing got you, god, thank you.

Randy (01:05:24):
Here's one from me, um, and, and this is, I want to
couch all my like objectionswith like, but I love you, tom.
But, here's an objection as Iwas reading through the book.
You do really great service tological and reasoned arguments,
but I don't feel like there's alot of scripture in your

(01:05:45):
arguments and in your takes.
Why not?
Why don't you like there's?

Kyle (01:05:48):
a lot of scripture in your arguments and in your takes.
Why not?

Randy (01:05:50):
Why don't you like the Bible, Tom?
Yeah, that's it.

Kyle (01:05:52):
I think that's a quippy version of it.

Tom (01:05:53):
Yeah, I decided on that particular book I wasn't going
to be heavy handed withscripture, because I thought my
audience was probably not anaudience that was going to be
proof texting left and right,okay, and so I stayed away from
scripture this Pluriform LoveBook that I mentioned.
There's a lot of scripture inthere, so I think I can make a

(01:06:14):
good case for my theology withscripture, but I didn't think
that was the best strategy forthis book.

Randy (01:06:21):
For the record, I do too, and I think most, or if not
almost all, of your argumentsare extremely scriptural.
You just don't cite.
You know all the differentspots and in some ways I'm
thinking, and some of usappreciate it.
I'm just imagining my Theo bro,friends and family.
Who would have?
All these objections based onthe unbiblical nature of it, and

(01:06:41):
I want to say it is biblical,it's just not overtly biblical,
yeah.

Kyle (01:06:46):
You spoiled him with that chapter in your Omnipotence book
.
That was all Bible, that.

Randy (01:06:50):
I skipped.

Kyle (01:06:50):
That's right.
Do you want to ask a version ofyour atonement question, or is
that too much?
Yeah, yeah.

Randy (01:06:59):
So in your book in Open and Relational Theology and
Introduction to Life-ChangingIdeas, you have a chapter on
atonement, and thankfully so,because there's a lot of
problems with our understandingsof the atonement and theories
of the atonement.
However, I felt like you didn'treally detail what an open and

(01:07:19):
relational theologicalunderstanding of the atonement
is or would be.
It seemed like maybe you kindof would favor a moral influence
theory of atonement that saysit's not.
The problem wasn't that any sinwasn't holding us back or that
there wasn't this chasm, butit's actually God trying to
influence and shape andtransform who we are and what it
means to be human in the life,death and resurrection of Jesus

(01:07:42):
perhaps.
But I was kind of left lackingfor what is an open and
relational idea of the atonement.

Tom (01:07:50):
Yeah, there's no one single open and relational idea of the
atonement and in thisparticular book I didn't lay out
my own personal view becauseI'm still working my view out.
Maybe the systematic theologywill be what gets me over the
final hump.
I've got these certainassumptions that I know I
believe, but I need to put themtogether in such a way that I

(01:08:11):
have a clear label and clearbiblical justification.
I don't think I have to haveall scripture to support my view
, but I want to have sort of.
These are my key passages andI'm still working on that.

Randy (01:08:28):
Okay.

Kyle (01:08:29):
All right, last one from me.
You talk about relentless lovein the book.
Tell us what that means, andthen I'll have a quick follow-up
.

Tom (01:08:37):
Relentless love is my view of the afterlife.
I'm not a classicaluniversalist and I like Karl
Barth or David Bentley Hart whothinks that God has the kind of
omnipotent power to guaranteeeveryone goes to the good place.
I'm not a person who believesin the traditional idea of
heaven and hell hell as eternalconscious torment and I'm not an

(01:09:00):
annihilationist, because Ithink that view says that God
gives up on people.
Relentless love says thatmoment by moment in this life
and in the afterlife I happen tobelieve in subjective
experience beyond bodily deaththat moment by moment God
invites us to love and when werespond well to that we enjoy

(01:09:21):
the positive consequences thatcome from love.
When we respond negatively toGod's invitation to love at any
moment, god doesn't punish us,hit us, send us to hell, but
there are natural negativeconsequences that come.
And relentless love holds outthe hope that, because God never

(01:09:42):
gives up, universalreconciliation is possible.

Randy (01:09:47):
Kyle, do you mind if I follow up real quick, because my
question is going to leave mymind.
Yours is on ironclad, I'm sureof it.
You said you made the statementthat you believe in subjective
experience after death.
Is that those words correct?
Yeah, what makes you believethat, tom?

Tom (01:10:02):
Near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, are my
main evidence for this.
So I don't know if you've readthe near-death experience
literature sometimes you knowNDEs, all that sort of stuff
that gives me hope.
It's also very common amongstmany religions to think of the

(01:10:23):
afterlife.
I mean, obviously all thereligions could be wrong, but so
I think there's some religiousjustification for it.
But I don't know for sure, I'mspeculating.

Kyle (01:10:33):
Okay, so back to the relentless love thing.
If God never stops pursuingsomeone who has said no in
number of times, is God honoringthat person's choice?

Tom (01:10:47):
Yes, by nature, by necessity.

Kyle (01:10:52):
That's one of those things philosophers like to say in
lieu of giving an actual answer.

Tom (01:10:55):
So I'm going to ask you to unpack it a little bit if you
don't mind.
How does God do that?
Is that what you're saying?

Kyle (01:11:01):
No, how is that honoring the choice of the person?
Person well, if god doesn'tforce the person to say yes to
love, then I think, sort of bydefinition, if I have immense
power over you and I ask you 17billion times to do something
and you say no, more and moreforcefully every time, is the 17

(01:11:24):
billion and one time respectingyour choice yes, there's two
answers.

Tom (01:11:29):
That one is this.
One is god can't not respectyour choice.
So it's by nature god invitesyou to love and can't force you.
So it isn't the case that god'ssaying you know, 17 billion, I
restrain from forcing you, butthis next one I'm gonna force
you.
So it's by nature that Godcan't.

(01:11:49):
But secondly, what was going tobe my second point?
Oh, but secondly, if we arerelational in the afterlife,
then we're not only affected byGod, but we're affected by
others in our circumstances.
So the 17 billionth and 1thtime could be different from the

(01:12:11):
17th billionth time.
So the variables can change.

Kyle (01:12:15):
Yeah, okay, I promise not to follow up anymore.

Tom (01:12:20):
It's a great follow-up.

Kyle (01:12:21):
I saw that look in your eyes and I was like this could
get fun.
Okay, anything more from you,Randy.
Is that the end of ourlightning round?
Is that the end of ourlightning round?

Randy (01:12:29):
That's the end of our lightning round.
I think that's great.
All right, before we're done,do you guys want to try to
persuade me to?
Go back to open theism, or arewe done with that now?

Tom (01:12:39):
With every head bowed and every eye closed, I see that
hand.

Randy (01:12:48):
Man, you guys are so good , you should be evangelical
pastors for sure, see this isthe beautiful thing about not
believing in hell.

Tom (01:12:55):
You know like I don't feel the pressure to try to convert
you to the right view to saveyou from eternal damnation,
that's yep, yeah, and I don'tcare anymore whether you're an
open deist.

Kyle (01:13:05):
Good, good.

Randy (01:13:08):
Just for the conversation's sake.
I don't care either.

Tom (01:13:12):
That's my deal.

Randy (01:13:13):
Like I really enjoy a lot of things about it.
I still have common questionslike if the future is open and
unknowable, then why did Jesussay things like before the
rooster crows?
Three times today you're goingto deny me.
Like that's problematic, right,there's things within scripture
that if you take at face value,it's problematic for the open

(01:13:35):
theism kind of camp.

Tom (01:13:36):
I admit that Not all open and relational theists will
admit that, but I do.
I think the majority ofbiblical passages support open
theism, but there are someoutliers for sure.

Randy (01:13:46):
Yep, and I will tell you, you saying something like that,
tom, makes me want to believeit even more.

Kyle (01:13:51):
I mean, it's almost like the Bible was written by
different people for differentpurposes.
I know, weird, it didn't alwayshave the same views of God.
Yeah, almost.

Randy (01:13:59):
The future and all those things.
Here's my last question, tom,as I was reading through your
book and I really appreciate it.
I really appreciate open andrelational theology.
I think it's a perspective thatall of us should try to
understand and sit with, at thevery least right, because I
think it's a more beautiful wayof understanding God.
My question, though, or mythought, as I was reading

(01:14:22):
through your book and you'recritiquing ideas that are a
couple thousand years old, thatshould give us pause, which I
know that you've had that pauseand you do along the way.
You take that seriously intradition and history and all
that.
However, I wonder how much ofwhat we're talking about here
has to do with just humanconsciousness evolving over time

(01:14:42):
and our religious ideas andconcepts evolving over time and
becoming truly better and betterand maybe perhaps more and more
accurate, going, you know, notin a straight line, obviously
it's not linear, but perhapsmaybe going closer and closer to
the truth.
It's kind of my idea of thekingdom of God that informs that
belief in many ways.
However, 2,000 years from now,if this is still all happening,

(01:15:06):
how are people going to assessopen and relational theology the
way we're kind of critiquingand assessing classical theism.
And are we a product of ourtime?
Just as you know, augustine andmany of the influential church
you know, patristics, wereinfluenced by their time and
Greek thought and all the otherthings.
Are they going to look at usand say, oh well, they're just a

(01:15:29):
product of their time, whichwas uber relational, and fill in
the blank?
Do you know what I'm getting athere?

Tom (01:15:35):
I think so.
I want to avoid two fallacies.
The first fallacy says thatwhatever happened in the past
must be the right way to think.
Yes, Augustine said it.
I believe that that settles it.
I think that's a fallacy.
Second fallacy I want to avoidis that everything in the
present is better than the past.
I don't think that's trueeither.

(01:15:57):
I think we have to havedifferent criteria than whether
or not it was always been saidor never been said.
I think our criteria ought tobe does this live well?
Does this bring us peace, joy,love, justice?
And yes, we're products of ourtime.
We can't escape that.
But we need to do the best withthe time we're given.

(01:16:18):
To quote Lord of the Rings, weneed to put together a way of
thinking and living that makesthe best sense and promotes a
kind of flourishing that I thinkwe all deep down want, even
though we may have differentideas about how to achieve it.

Randy (01:16:36):
I think that I'm happy to end there, Kyle.

Kyle (01:16:40):
Me too, especially since he quoted a classical theist
there at the end.

Randy (01:16:44):
So I think, it's all good Awesome.

Kyle (01:16:46):
Tom, it's always lovely to talk to you, I love it's all
good.
Awesome, tom, it's alwayslovely to talk to you.
I love talking to you guys tooNext time we're going to pick
one topic and we're going totalk only about one thing
instead of like all of theology.

Tom (01:16:58):
Well see, that doesn't work in opening relational, because
everything interconnected for us.

Randy (01:17:03):
Can I ask you, Tom?
This is just self-servingcompletely.

Tom (01:17:14):
What do we got to do to make it on the back of the next
book for crying out loud Ididn't know you when that book
came out.

Randy (01:17:18):
So sorry, thomas.
J Ord, thank you for the workyou do in general.
Thank you for open andrelational theology.
This book an introduction tolife-changing ideas.
I highly recommend it.
For anyone who's kind of justdoesn't feel like the theology
they've been given and theunderstanding of God and reality
just fits perfectly.
I highly recommend you pick upthis book and just consider some
of these thoughts.
Again, it's an invitation intomore conversation.

(01:17:40):
Where can we find your work,tom?
And like, if somebody says I'mreally intrigued by the idea of
theological studies, where can Ido that?
Where can we plug them in, tom?

Tom (01:17:50):
Yeah Well, I direct doctoral programs in open and
relational theology at NorthwindTheological Seminary, but there
are also master's courses thereand other educational offerings
.
If you're thinking about anonline education, you might
check that out.
You can check out more aboutopen relational theology at the
Center for Open RelationalTheology and that URL is the

(01:18:14):
letter C, the number four O-R-Tdot com.
C for Ort dot com.
And I also want to say you know, as I said earlier, I don't
want to pretend like I've gotall the answers.
I'm not absolutely certainabout these things, but often
when I speak at a conference ora university or a church or a

(01:18:37):
seminary, I will get done andpeople will walk up to me and
they'll say you know, I'vealways been kind of thinking
what you just talked about.
I just didn't have the words toarticulate it.
So I suspect that some of thefolks listening to this, if they
read this book, they'll havethe similar reaction.
They'll say you know, that kindof fits my intuitions, but I

(01:18:59):
never heard anyone quite say itlike this.

Randy (01:19:02):
Yeah, yeah, and listeners , just so we're clear.
We know that we can kind ofbring some of these critiques to
Tom, because he can stand it,he can hang in there and he's
really, really smart.
But the truth of the matter isand I think I'm speaking for
Kyle this is lovely stuff thatyou're putting out into the
world.
This is very, very highlynecessary stuff that you're

(01:19:23):
putting out into the worldhelping people understand the
things as we deconstruct ourspirituality and try to figure
out what any of this means forus and what role we have to play
in it.
All of it, the things thatyou're thinking about and
putting out into the world, arereally important, Tom.

Tom (01:19:38):
Thank you for saying that, randy, I appreciate it.

Randy (01:19:54):
Thanks for listening to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk
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