The God who Risks

Von Balthasar, not Greg Boyd, writes: “a world that is full of risks can only be created within the Son’s processio (prolonged as missio ); this shows that every ‘risk’ on God’s part is undergirded by . . . the power-less power of the divine self-giving. We cannot say that the Father is involved in ‘risk’ by allowing his Son to go to the Cross, as if only then could he be sure of the earnestness of the Son’s indebtedness and gratitude. However, if we ask whether there is suffering in God the answer is this: there is something in God that can develop into suffering This suffering occurs when the recklessness with which the Father gives himself away (and all that is his) encounters a freedom that, instead of responding in kind to this magnanimity, changes into a calculating cautious self-preservation. This contrasts with the essentially divine recklessness of the Son, who allows himself to be squandered, and the Spirit who accompanies him.”