Theology of Love

When I made some sharp comments about Thomas Oord’s book on love a few weeks back, Oord wrote to inform me that he’s written another book that deals more overtly with the themes I found lacking in his other book.  Oord conceded that I might remain unsatisfied even then, but I thought it only fair to take a look at the fuller account ( The Nature of Love: A Theology ).  As he expected, I do remain unsatisfied, and how.

One of the alarming recent developments within “open theism” is the overt renunciation of creatio ex nihilo .  As Oord argues, rightly, “A God who can create something from nothing is a God whose power and resources are apparently unlimited . . . . The God whose unlimited power created something from nothing is capable of completely controlling that which God creates – which is everything.”  Then he pushes the argument to say that creatio ex nihilo implies that God is “culpable for failing to control creatures” and so to “prevent genuine evil.”  I don’t agree with the last point, but the challenge is a powerful one, and Oord is correct to stress (over against many who deny it) that this strong form of sovereignty is inherent in the doctrine of creation.

A God who controls everything is a problem for Oord because he wants a theology that makes it impossible for God to coerce, because, on his account, coercion is incompatible with love.

He writes, “One of the keys to constructing an adequate theology of love is to portray God as unable to coerce.  This means God cannot entirely control others.  An adequate theology of love, however, should present God as almighty.  Being almighty need not entail the capacity to coerce others, in the sense of overriding, withdrawing, or failing to offer freedom.  Coercion and love are irreconcilable.”

The logic of the position is impeccable: To protect human freedom, we need to adjust the classical doctrine of God so that He’s no longer in complete control of the world.  And to ensure that He’s not in complete control of the world, we need to deny creatio ex nihilo , because a God who can create from nothing looks a lot like the God that Calvin worshiped, and we can’t have that.

I find little persuasive in Oord’s positive argument, but let me highlight only one point that, to my mind, pulls the rug from his whole project.  Jettison creatio ex nihilo , and what’s left?  A God who creates from something existing alongside.  And how does this God-who-cannot-create-from-nothing shape that something into the world we know?  He’s gotta struggle with it.  Oord cites, with apparent approval, Jon Levenson’s claim that “We can capture the essence of the idea of creation in the Hebrew Bible with the word ‘mastery,” and Oord himself adds that in creation “God is the victor in combat” over enemies that “existed prior to God’s creating the universe.”  He also cites Rolf Knierim’s claim that creation is like redemption, “Yahweh is the creator of the world because he is its liberator from chaos, just as he is the creator of Israel because he is its liberator from oppression.”

Now, “mastery” and “victor in combat” and “liberation from oppression” all sound terribly coercive to my ear.  Creation is like redemption from Egypt – as in, Yahweh brings plagues and beats down the chaos in order to liberate order?  For Oord, apparently, God’s relation to creation is, at its initiation, coercive.  While, on the other hand, those dreaded “classical theists” speak of creation as a gift of being, of created existence as existence by participation, which is to say, by the continuous generous outpouring of the Spirit.  Who’s got the better-founded theology of love?  Oord’s position doesn’t sound at all like an ontology of love to me.  It’s a reiteration of pagan/modern/postmodern ontologies of violence.

Oord does identify some problems in traditional accounts of love (in Augustine, for instance), but his solution is worse than the disease.  And he doesn’t always hit home with his criticisms.  I doubt anyone would find “God’s freedom from us is more important than God’s love for us” a recognizable summary of Barth.