Episode 111: Tom Oord - Uncontrolling Love of God

In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Pete and Jared talk with Tom Oord about the things God can and cannot do and how that affects our view of the Bible and salvation as they explore the following questions:

• Why did monotheism create the problem of evil?
• Why does the problem of evil matter?
• Can God be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving at the same time?
• Are there genuine evils in the world or is suffering and pain part of God’s mysterious plan?
• Does the Bible have a consistent theology on God’s character?
• What discoveries did Tom Oord make when he looked at what the Bible said about God’s power?
• Are words like “revelation” and “inspiration” helpful for talking about the Bible?
• How do the ways we view God impact the way we read the Bible?
• Can God communicate to humans in an infallible way?
• What do we lose if we come to think God does not have control?
• How does our concept of love get shaped by the concept of justice?
• Why did Jesus die?
• What is kenosis? 

Tweetables

Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Tom Oord you can share. 

• “Since I think love is inherently uncontrolling, this revelation and inspiration [of the Bible] can’t be controlling.” @ThomasJayOord
• “God really needs our cooperation if love is to win. God really needs our cooperation to overcome evil. ” @ThomasJayOord
• “God doesn’t need us for God to exist… but in order for God to get the kind of outcomes, consequences, results that God wants and given that those results are always framed in terms of love, God really needs our loving cooperation.” @ThomasJayOord
• “I go so far as to say God simply couldn’t have given a clear message because to do so God would have to control the message and the messengers and I don’t think God can control.” @ThomasJayOord
• “We as individuals and in society are consistently learning what love requires given where we are at in our time.” @ThomasJayOord
• “What is loving is partly contingent on the context and who’s involved, you know? Maybe it is the case in some contexts that acting in some ways is loving but other ways is not.” @ThomasJayOord
• “If God can’t deny God’s own self, and God is love, God must love. And maybe this love is self-giving, others-empowering, uncontrolling. That might then become a clue on how we might rethink God’s power in light of God’s love.” @ThomasJayOord
• “I still think God’s powerful, I just don’t think that God has the kind of controlling or single-handed determination that many people have thought God has.” @ThomasJayOord

Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: God Can’t
• Book: The Uncontrolling Love of God
• Website: Thomas Jay Oord
• Website: Center for Open & Relational Theology
• Patreon: The Bible for Normal People

[bg_collapse view="link-inline" expand_text="Read the transcript" collapse_text="Hide the transcript" ]

00:00

Pete:  You’relistening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on theinternet.  Serious talk about the sacredbook.  I’m Pete Enns.

Jared:  And I’m JaredByas.

[Jaunty Intro Music]

Pete:  Hey!  Welcome normal people to this episode of theBible for Normal People.  Our topic todayis “are there things God can’t do?” and our guest is…Jared.

Jared:  Tom Oord,otherwise known as Thomas Jay Oord.

Pete:  And that’sJ-A-Y Oord.

Jared:  Yes.  Who was a professor of theology andphilosophy at Northwest Nazarene University and said some things that we’lltalk about that are a little bit different from what you would typically hear.  He wrote some of this—we asked the question,“Are there things God can’t do?”  TomOord wrote a book called God Can’t.  (laughter). Spoiler alert—

Pete: There’s—(laughter). There’s your answer—

Jared:  And anotherone that’s a little more descriptive, at least the title, The Uncontrolling Love of God.  Wetalk a little bit about how our views of God impact how we read the Bible,especially in the ways that Tom has developed his view of God, and, of course,relying on years and years of Christian tradition and history.  He’s not making this stuff up out of nowhere.

Pete:  Right.  And just living through maybe somefrustration or crisis of faith earlier in his life about thinking through whatGod is like and how the Bible—how it’s oftentimes understood—doesn’t reallyhelp and maybe some reasons people give for why God does certain things in theBible.

He didn’t find those things very satisfying.  He just went in another direction and hesaid, “Maybe there are some things that God just can’t do.  Not that he won’t.”

Jared:  Right.

Pete:  That God—and Ishouldn’t say he—but that God can’t do. That can raise hackles, right Jared, because we think about God as beingpowerful and all-powerful.  How can anall-powerful being not be able to do things—

Jared:  Evil.  Yeah.

Pete:  He’ll get tothat.  But maybe there’s something aboutGod that’s more fundamental than a god of power and sovereignty and that kindof thing, so—

Jared:  And I reallyappreciated—this could have been a hairy episode in terms a lot of weightyconcepts and a lot of things that I feel like Tom navigated really well interms of being able to articulate it for every-day people.  I think you and I fall in that camp of “thisisn’t necessarily our world either.” 

Pete:  One term hesaid, “kenosis,” a couple of times and that’s—

Jared:  Yeah.  That’s good.

Pete:  Maybe just ifpeople aren’t familiar with that.  It’s aGreek word.  It comes from PhilippiansChapter 2 where Jesus “emptied himself,” so to speak, of His divine prerogativeand didn’t take advantage of it.  Thatword “kenosis” refers to that.  There aretheologians who talk a lot about God’s kenosis and emptying Himself—

Jared:  Orkenotic.  You might hear it that way—

Pete:  Kenotic.  The adjective.  That’s what he means by that when we get tothat.

Jared:  Yup.

Pete:  So.

Jared:  Allright.  Let’s let him get to that—

Pete:  Let’s let himget to that—

Jared:  Here’s—

Pete:  I can’t.

Jared:  Are therethings God can’t do? (laughter)

[Jaunty Music]

Tom:  It’s not justthat God is inviting us to participate, inviting us to contribute, but God justcould get the job done single-handedly without us if we decide not tocooperate.  I’m saying God really needsour cooperation if love is to win.  Godreally needs our cooperation to overcome evil. That’s gonna feel strange to a lot of people because they kind of like agod who could fix things single-handedly even if we don’t cooperate.

[Jaunty Music Ends]

Pete:  Hey Tom.  Welcome to the podcast.

Tom:  Hey.  It’s my pleasure to have this conversationwith you guys.

Pete:  Yeah.  Great to have you here.  Well, listen. Tom, why don’t you just take a couple minutes and introduce yourself toour listeners and a little bit of your spiritual biography and your career andeven how you got interested in theology.

Tom:  (laughter)

Pete:  Most peoplewant to do biblical studies, but when they can’t hack it, they do theology(laughter).  That’s the way I look at it.

Tom:  Well, I got tos—

Pete:  Jared’s told menot to insult my guests.  (laughter)  I shouldn’t do that.  I’m sorry.

Tom:  Well, I got tosay I’ve been thinking about God stuff since I was a little kid in church andSunday School and wrestling with the big questions.  Although, the questions when I was youngerare a little different than they are today.

But I was one of those people who took theologyseriously.  I was an evangelist.  I went in this thing really hardcore tryingto convert people, get them into heaven, that sort of thing.  Then, I went through a crisis of faith incollege and was an atheist for a short period of time, because the reasons Ihad for believing that there was a god and evangelizing about that god, thosereasons no longer made sense to me.

I returned to faith based primarily on two things:  one, this search for meaning that I was engagedin; secondly, these fundamental intuitions that I ought to be a loving personand that other people ought to love and the view that there must be some kindof source for these intuitions.  And thatsource, most people call God.

05:04

For a while, I believed in a loving god.  I thought Jesus was pretty cool.  That was about the extent of mytheology.  But over time, I developedvarious views and developed a kind of theology that eventually led me to gradschool to get a PhD, to begin teaching philosophy and theology and I did so fora couple of institutions.

Not too long ago, I was forced out of my institution forhaving, we might say, too progressive of a theology for the President’s liking.

Pete:  Okay.  Well, we’ll probably get to that.  Some of the ideas that you have in yourbook.  Just, very briefly, since youmentioned it, you said you had a crisis of faith in college.  Again, a lot of our listeners have passed,including myself and Jared, through these things too.  What generated that for you in college?

Tom:  I was hard-coreinto evangelism.  I did a lot of studyingof the Bible and studying of arguments. But I took this philosophy/religion course and for the first time, Iread things from really smart atheists, agnostics, those from other religioustraditions.  It was really for the sakeof intellectual honesty that I stopped believing in God.  It wasn’t like I was mad at the church orsome youth pastor abused me or whatever. It wasn’t some rebellion.  It wasreally an intellectual question and one that I kept at, which eventuallybrought me back to believing it was more plausible than not that there is agod.  I’m not certain there is agod.  I live my life based on thisplausibility that there is a god of love.

Pete:  Coming back toa different kind of god?  Is that fair tosay?

Tom:  I think so.  Yeah. It wasn’t like I didn’t think God was loving before, but I did startrethinking some of my key views about God and I’m sure we’ll get into some ofthose as this interview goes on.

Jared:  Yeah.  I maybe just want to jump into the deep endwith that a little bit, because Pete’s been saying, “recently,” and I wouldagree with this, that we keep talking about the Bible and it seems as thoughmany of these conversations when we talk about how to read the Bible reallyhinge on this question of “what is God like?” and that tends to impact how we come to the Bible. 

It sounds like you’ve gone through some shifts about whatGod is like.  Some of your books andwritings and a lot of what you talk about has this perspective on God thatmaybe our listeners haven’t heard much about before.  Can you talk about some of those key elementsor shifts for you about what God is like and how that’s impacted how youpractice your faith?

Tom:  Sure.  Let me address three issues prettyquickly.  One, I used to believe theBible had absolutely no errors because God is sovereign and God would make surethat we had a revelation of who God is that was error-free. 

Then, I actually read the Bible.  (laughter) Turns out there’s lots of inconsistencies at least, if not outrighterrors.  That made me question how Ishould interpret the Bible, what kind of role it should play. 

Eventually, it made me change my view of God’s activity,God’s power even in the world.

Secondly, I started wrestling with questions of creaturelyfreedom and God’s knowledge.  So, thisidea that if God could somehow know the future with absolute certainty, thenhow am I free to actually choose to do other than what God already knows is inthe case.  There seemed to be anincompatibility in my way of thinking between what we might call “exhaustivedivine foreknowledge” and my free will.

The third big thing and the one that I’ve been working on inthe last few books is the problem of evil. If there is a perfectly loving God who is incredibly powerful, then whywouldn’t this God prevent the genuine evils in my life, the lives of my friendsand family and the lives even of those who don’t like me (laughter) morebroadly.  Why wouldn’t this God preventthose evils?

I eventually came to believe I had to rethink God’s power.

Pete:  Rethink God’spower.  Okay.  Yeah. Gee.  That’s interesting.  The problem of evil’s been around before theBible.  (laughter)—

Tom:  Yeah.  (laughter)

Pete:  The ancientBabylonians wrote about this too—

Tom:  Since there wasevil.  It was a problem—

Pete:  Ever sincethere was evil—  (laughter)  When you introduce a divine being intothat—that is the problem.  That’s why youhave this problem of evil.

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  I rememberhearing someone say a while back that when you have a pantheon of gods, whenyou have many gods, you can sort of chalk evil up to the gods are warring witheach other—

10:03

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  But once you havemonotheism (laughter), that’s when you have a bigger problem, because why wouldan all-mighty and all-loving god blah blah blah and all that kind of stuff so.

Tom:  Yeah.  You know, there’s a—I’m sure many of yourlisteners know the New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, who wrote a book aboutten years ago.  I think the title of thebook is God’s Problem.  In this particular book, he goes throughthe various approaches to evil and scripture and concludes that the Biblereally doesn’t give a precise answer to this big question and even is verybiographical in saying that, for him, personally, this was the reason why hecould—he’s either agnostic or atheist, but he’s not the theist that he was whenhe was younger.

I look at the Bible and see those same stories and see thosesame kinds of issues that Bart brings up. But I’ve carved a different kind of answer than the kind of answer orquasi-solution that others have suggested that I think is actually aligned withScripture, if interpreted or read in a particular kind of way.

Jared:  Before we dothat, I want to back up.  I want to makesure everyone is understanding we’ve kind of throw out some philosophicalconcepts and I think—

Tom:  Sure.

Jared:  --there’s aloaded term in the problem, the problem of evil, which would be—you can evenpile on, but traditionally, it would have been three things:  an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-lovingGod and given the reality of evil, it seems improbably that we could have all threeof those things.  The powerful, theknowing and the loving. 

Usually, in our response to this or a theologian’s—I thinkof Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happento Good People, who kind of popularized this—

Tom:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Jared:  We’re usuallykind of taking out one of those things and saying, “Maybe this is theresponse.”  Is there anything else youwould say to set up what the problem of evil is and why it matters?

Tom:  I think you’veidentified it pretty well.  I think theother element of this that you’re assuming is when you look at the answersgiven by theists of various religions, but especially Christians, is thequestion of evil itself.  Are theregenuine evils in the world or is everything that is painful, all suffering,actually a part of some mysterious divine plan meant for some greater purpose,meant to teach us a lesson, meant as punishment, meant as something that meansthat these painful events aren’t really genuinely evil from God’s perspective,just pretty difficult for us in our limited perspective.

Pete:  Boy.  That raises a lot of questions(laughter).  The problem of evil—I’d liketo get into how you are approaching that and how you are handling Biblicaltexts.  Can you give us an example of howsomething in the Bible that you might read a little bit differently than a BartEhrman would read it?  That might get usinto thinking about the Bible a little bit differently than maybe we’re usedto.  Can you give an example?

Tom:  Sure.  Let me start generally and then I’ll go to anexample.

Pete:  Okay.

Tom:  When I look atthe Bible, I don’t think of the Bible as a systematic theology that’s coherentthrough and through.  I think of theBible of a collection of writings, narratives, poetry, etc. that sometimes isin conflict internally.  But I see overand over again themes about divine love and God’s call for us to love.  We might say that love is, to use thelanguage of John Wesley, the whole tenor and scope of Scripture.  In other words, it’s kind of the maintheme. 

I think it’s especially witnessed to in Jesus Christ.  So, when I come across stories—let’s say inthe Psalms when the Israelites believe God wants them to bash the babies’ headsagainst the rocks.  I don’t look at thatand say, “You know, that’s really a loving thing from God’s perspective.”  I look at it and say, “Nope.  That isn’t loving and those folks who thoughtGod wanted them to do such dastardly deeds simply get God wrong.”

I’m wiling to say some images and stories about God inScripture are incorrect and I do that based upon a broader view of Scripturewhich says that I think the majority of passages or the broad scope ofScripture points to a God of love who calls us to love, who is most perfectlyrevealed in Jesus, who loves also. 

I’m willing to jettison, or at least think some stories andsome ideas in Scripture are incorrect.

15:05

Pete:  Before we getnow into maybe some more specifics, because you raised something, I just knowthe question people are asking and maybe you can riff a little bit on whetheryou think words like revelation or inspiration are worthwhile for talking aboutScripture.  If Biblical writers getthings wrong (by the way, I’ve said similar things so I’ve had)—

Tom:  (laughter)  Yes.

Pete:  By the way,you’re helping me answer the question. (laughter)  How do you articulatethose things or do you want to redefine those things or just think of differentcategories entirely?

Tom:  I like the wordsrevelation and inspiration.  I think Godinspired the Biblical writers and there’s a revelation of who God is in Scripture.  But often tied to those words is a particularview of God’s power which assumes that if God wanted to, God could give acrystal clear, unambiguous message that would be free from error in any sense.

In other words, a particular view of divine sovereignty thatI reject.  When I use those terms, I meanthem seriously, but I’m rejecting the idea that inspiration means that Godcontrolled the process entirely to make sure that whatever we find on the text,which, of course, as you know, there’s lots of texts.  It’s not just one.

Whatever we find there isn’t necessarily exactly what Godwanted.

Pete:  Okay.  I think you’re putting your finger onsomething that I’ve heard too, that a lot of notions of the Bible being inspiredor revealed by God, it is sort of God is up there and the sovereign God—

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  --is dictatingthese things will be written.

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  Am Ioverstating or missing your point when I say that maybe you’re folding termslike inspiration and revelation into this over-arching theme of Scripture whichis the love of God?

Tom:  Yeah.  That’s a nice way to put it—

Pete:  Okay.  Okay.

Tom:  Since I thinklove is inherently uncontrolling, this revelation and inspiration can’t becontrolling.

Pete:  Wow.  All right. 

Jared:  I think thatjust illustrates the point beautifully we were making earlier where the Bibleis impacted by what we think God is like. So, if God is—

Pete:  Yes.

Jared: --inherently uncontrolling, then whatever mean byrevelation and inspiration needs to have that view in mind as well.

Tom:  That’sright.  I even go further on this revelationand inspiration issue to distinguish my view from some other views you’veprobably heard, other views which say, “God could have given a perfect messageand made sure it was put on paper and transmitted throughout thegenerations.  God could have done that,but God accommodated to the people in their time.  They didn’t know any better and God decided,‘Well, I’m not going to fix this.’” 

Those kinds of views typically assume that God has the kindof power to give an inerrant message about who God is, but God decided forwhatever reason not to give that clear message and accommodated to theirignorance or their views of the time.

I go so far as to say God simply couldn’t have given a clearmessage because to do so, God would have to control the message and themessengers.  I don’t think God cancontrol.

Pete:  All right.  So, God can’t do things.  Thanks for being our guest today, Tom(laughter).  I think we’re done with thisepisode.

Jared:  We have ourtweetable quote.

Pete:  I’m watchingour graph go down in terms of people—(laughter) I’m just kidding.  Obviously, Ithink I get what you’re saying.  Fleshthat out a little bit more, that God—

Tom:  Sure.

Pete:  --God can’tcommunicate in an infallible way.  Isthat what you’re saying—

Tom:  Yeah.  I am.

Pete:  Okay.

Tom:  I am sayingthat—

Pete:  Flesh that outa little bit more.

Tom:  I think that Godis constantly communicating.  God isconstantly acting, calling, inspiring, empowering.  This is not a God of deism.  This is a God who is always active all the timeand always communicating.  But, I don’tthink this communication is single-handedly imposed upon the world and that Godhas the kind of capacities to make sure we get it right every time. 

There’s always some kind of creaturely cooperation that’s necessaryand even when cooperation is there, that doesn’t guarantee that humans geteverything perfect.

Pete:  So, this is allrelational.  Okay—

Tom:  Yes.  To the core.

Jared:  Yeah.  Yeah—

Pete:  Which is love.

Jared:  Yeah.

Tom:  Yes.  And—

Pete:  You’re sort ofblowing my mind here, Tom.  But that’sall right—

Tom:  No.  (laughter) In some ways, this shouldn’t be too shocking to your listeners, becauseif they grant that the Bible at least has inconsistencies, if notcontradictions, and if they also still want to think that God had something todo with it, then they have to ask the question, “well, why wouldn’t a lovingand powerful God make sure we got it right?” (laughter)  “and make sure therewere no inconsistencies?”  I’m saying,“Maybe we need to give up on the idea that God can control in that kind ofway.”

20:21

Jared:  I think theflipside, and I wonder here what some people you’ve interacted with have saidand how you’ve responded, because in the way I think about it, I’m often thinkingof the flip side of power, which we recently in our culture with the politicsand other things, we think of power negatively, but the flip side of that isthat power can also bring comfort. 

We’re losing by saying that God is uncontrolling as wellbecause if God’s not able to manipulate the situation in my favor and I put mytrust in God’s ability to do that, then I feel like I may be floating in what Iwould call Jean-Paul Sartre, the “terrible freedom” is this sense now that Ihave to step up and cooperate and collaborate and be active in this process.

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  Do you runinto that with people who are not always celebrating this uncontrolling God,but there’s a loss or a grief there too?

Tom:  Yeah.  It was John Calvin who called his view ofpredestination, “a comforting doctrine.” I think some people who go through difficulties in their own lives findsome comfort in thinking that despite the garbage and the pain and thesuffering, that in some mysterious way, God is still in control. 

But lots of other people, and I get letters from thesepeople just about every week, see that same God and say, “That gives me nocomfort at all to think that God either caused or even allowed the horriblethings that have happened to me and others.” 

There is an interesting issue here in terms of what’scomforting and what’s not to various people.

Jared:  For me, whatit does is it helps me practically when I talk to people about the Bible, it’s importantto recognize you are an active participant in this process—

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  —and ourcommunity of faith are active participants. I think of “will of God” theology that I would have grown up with where—

Pete:  Right.

Jared:  —our only job,sort of like Indiana Jones with the invisible path, is to throw some dirt on itso that we can kind of see this path that God designed for us, but if we’re notcareful, we’re going to miss it.  What Ihear you saying is when it comes reading our Scriptures and enacting our faith,it’s a much more participatory process, which does come with some risk, butit’s also empowering.

Tom:  That’s exactlywhat I’m saying.  I’m even going furtherthan many people would go who are into some kind of relational or participatorytheology.  I’m saying it’s not just thatGod is inviting us to participate, inviting us to contribute, but God couldjust get the job done without us if we decide not to cooperate.  I’m saying God really needs our cooperationif love is to win.  God really needs ourcooperation to overcome evil.  That’sgoing to feel strange to a lot of people because they kind of like a god whocould fix things single-handedly even if we don’t cooperate.

23:35 (Producer’s Group Endorsement)

25:05

Pete:  Let me try toact like a theologian for a second. (laughter).  Are you saying--  I want to try to understand what you’resaying.  Are you saying that God in God’sessence needs us or that God has set up the universe in such a way that we getto participate?

Tom:  I’m saying thatGod doesn’t need us for God to exist. God exists necessarily, to use classical language.  But in order for God to get the kind of outcomes,consequences, results that God wants, and given that those results are alwaysframed in terms of love, God really needs our loving cooperation.

Pete:  Because loveinvolves risk?

Tom:  Yes.

Pete:  For God tolove, He— God can’t control us.  Okay—

Tom:  Exactly.  Yeah.

Pete:  Hmm.

Tom:  The way I put ittechnically is this:  love is inherentlyuncontrolling and love comes logically first in God’s nature.  Which means that God can’t choose not tolove, God can’t choose to control.  It’s God’svery nature to love in an uncontrolling way.

Pete:  Okay—

Jared:  And that’sinherently relational as well, because that’s built into the definition oflove—

Tom:  That’sright.  That’s right.  Yeah. Very relational.

Pete:  I don’t want toget into hyper speed here, but let’s see where this goes (laughter)—

Tom:  Okay.

Pete:  God’s judgmentis one that you would feel is ultimately redemptive for all creation?  For all people?  I’m asking the hell question—

Tom:  Yeah.  Oh gotcha. Okay.—

Pete:  Yeah.  Oh yeah. That.  (laughter). Right?  Let’s say you need eternal punishment or atleast maybe annihilation of creatures, I think people would say doesn’t seem tocome from love, but from retribution.

Tom:  That’sright.  So, I don’t believe in thecommon—I almost said traditional, but I don’t traditional’s the right word—

Pete:  Yeah.  It’s not traditional.

Tom:  The popular viewof hell.  I also don’t like the commonview of annihilation because I think it presupposes that God gives up on somepeople, that God says, “Pete—he’s been evil for 80 years (laughter)—there’s noway he’s redeemable so therefore, he’s going to get annihilated.

Jared:  That is a truestory.

Pete:  You’ve beentalking to people.  (laughter)

Tom:  I think—Iactually have a view of this that I call the relentless love eschatology thatsays that God never gives up in this life or the next.  God never sends people to hell, but there arenatural, negative consequences that come from saying no to love, in this lifeand the next.  It’s not like God’s—it’snot maybe what we would call a classical universalist’s view which says, “Ally,ally, in come free.”  Then everybody goesto heaven even if they don’t want to be there. 

This is a god who always invites, always calls, never givesup, but we always have the free choice, in this life and in the next, to say noto that invitation.

Pete:  That’s not veryevangelical.  (laughter).

I’m chuckling too. I’m thinking of—that’s a different way of picturing God for a lot ofpeople who have been raised in the western evangelical world—

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  Right?  Because this seems to be giving something upof God that’s really cherished.  But Iguess you would say you’re not really giving something up as much as gainingsomething.

Tom:  I think so.  Another way I’d say it is this:  what if we took the steadfast love of God asour primary starting point, the love that is everlasting, the love that nevergives up, the love that never forces its own way, all Biblical phrases?  What if we kept that at the very center andthought about theology, including what happens after we die, in light of thatidea?  We might come to some kind of viewsimilar to the one I’ve tried to propose here?

Jared:  So, if—I wantto come back to this notion that I think comes from the Bible itself aroundjustice.  When we talk about some ofthese concepts, I keep coming back to how does love and justice interact, whenwe have the prophets and these notions that God is just.  How does that—because I think that’s one ofthe questions that comes up for people—it’s all fine and good to talk aboutlove, but how does our concept of love get shaped by the idea of justice?

30:02

Tom:  Yeah.  Justice means many different things and oneof the common ways to distinguish between two of the major ways to think aboutjustice is to talk about justice as retribution, which is the divinediscipline, God kicking your butt or whatever for doing something wrong—andjustice as distributive and reconciling, which is the idea that we want to makesure people have equal access to what’s good and that any kind of negative consequencesthat come about are consequences that God tries to use to reconcile us in loveto a right relationship.

The view I’m proposing rejects the retribution model.  It rejects the idea that God is a divinespanking machine that takes you out to the back woods if you sin, but itdoesn’t give up on the notion that there are real, natural, negativeconsequences for sin, so it isn’t some sort of extreme relativism.  God is just doing nothing and anything we dohas no consequences.  I retain thataspect.

Jared:  When you readthe Bible—say reading Deuteronomy—there seems to be this retributive sense of“if you do these things, you’re blessed, if you do these things, you’recursed”—would you say that’s talking about natural consequences or would thatbe one of those areas where you would say, “they just got God wrong” in thatsense?

Tom:  I would saynatural consequences.  The vast majorityof passages along those lines, I can affirm—I can say, “There’s abundant lifeto be had when you follow God’s leading to love.”  It doesn’t mean everything turns out rosy allthe time, because we also live in a world in which others don’t love and wesometimes reap the natural, negative consequences of their lack of love.

But there is joy, there is abundant life in responding toGod’s call to love.  That’s what thosepassages are speaking of.

Jared: Would they have conceived of love, because it seemslike, in the context, the framing of what love is in that context is to followthe covenant—

Pete:  Obey.

Jared:  Thoselaws.  Which for us—

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  —would seemstrange.  I don’t think of not wearingmixed cloth clothing as a form of love today. How does the law and following those covenant commands fit into that?

Tom:  Yeah.  Some of them might be set aside in myscheme.  Probably a better way to thinkof them is that what is loving is partly contention on the context and whoseinvolved.  Maybe it is the case, in somecontexts, that acting in some ways is loving, but other ways is not.  But another context, that changes.

It’s also the case, I think, that we, as individuals and associety, are consistently learning what love requires given where we’re at inour times.  Today, I think a lot of us believethat love requires that we care for the planet in a particular way that wouldhave probably not crossed the minds of most people a hundred years ago.

Pete:  That increasedconsciousness is a work of the Spirit?

Tom:  I think so.  Yeah.

Pete:  Okay.  Yeah. Which goes beyond the Bible.

Tom:  It does.  Yeah. I th—

Pete:  I’m one ofthose people that doesn’t think that the Bible actually advocates earth care.

Tom:  I think it’spretty hard to make that argument.

Pete:  Yeah.  But I think it’s right and think God caresthat we do that.  I don’t believe you canget that from the Bible---

Jared:  I’m with—

Pete:  Okay.  Why did Jesus die?  Can we get the whole cross thing into thishere (laughter)—I’ve got about 75,000 questions right now, but—

Jared:  I’m glad Peteis just lobbing you the softball questions tonight (laughter).

Tom:  That’s actuallyan issue.  My Christology is one that I’mworking on at the time—

Pete:  Yeah.

Tom: —so I don’t have a full answer for you.  I can’t at least say the following:  Christ’s death is a revelation that God isone who suffers.  Christ’s death is aresult of rebellion of people who act contrary to God’s call to love. 

I’m not a person who thinks that God predestined andpredetermined the death of Jesus before the foundations of the world.  I do, however, think that God had in mind,from all eternity, that we ought to live a life of love.  And God could see that someone who lovedperfectly is probably going to meet up with some pretty stiff opposition.

These kinds of things are in my mind as I work through myparticular Christology and what the death of Jesus is all about.

Pete:  To push that alittle bit—I’m with you that I don’t—I mean, who has Christology workedout?  You know what I mean?  (laughter) Even things like, why did Jesus die is not…

35:12

Jared:  It doesn’teven seem like Paul has it worked out—

Pete:  Yeah.  That’s not the easiest question to answer—

Tom:  Good point.

Pete:  Somethinglike—and I’m just riffing here—the whole insistence that blood isnecessary—might that be the perception on the part of New Testament writers?

Tom:  I think that’sright.  Given—you know the Bible betterthan I do—given what Old Testament writers are saying, it’s very natural forNew Testament writers to have that view in mind.

Pete:  Because oftheir Jewish tradition, their heritage. It’s almost like the it’s the only—

Tom:  Exactly.

Pete:  —language theyhave to describe it.  I can hear the pushback already and I would respect the pushback that this has been part of howthe Christian story has always been told. The question then becomes does—there hasn’t been one way the Christianstory’s been told about the cross, but basically, blood’s been important.  That raises the issue of whether theologykeeps moving and progressing and changing—

Tom:  It does.  I think there’s very strong evidence that itdoes.  It doesn’t mean that the Bible haschanged, although there’s various versions of the Bible and interpretations andall that, but the way we have interpreted the Bible historically has definitelychanged.  You’re talking to a guy who’swritten a book that says, “God can’t.” (laughter) That means I’m a person who thinks that there might be somebetter ways to think about God’s power than at least has been in the majorityopinion.

I’m banking on the idea that there are better ways to thinkabout God than maybe have at least dominated in the Christian tradition.

Pete:  Just a quickthought, here, Tom.  Do not go back toevangelism, because you’d really be bad at it. (laughter) I’m just thinking. It’s not going to work. Door-to-door, doing this stuff. There’s no pamphlet you can give them—

Tom:  Well, you know—

Pete:  There’s no chictract you can give them.  There’s nopamphlet.  Nothing.  I mean, just—

Tom:  I know you’rejoking, but the truth is I get tons of notes from people who say, “Your way ofthinking about God allows me to believe in God again.”  It is common.

Pete:  Isn’t thatinteresting—

Tom:  Yes.

Pete:  The thingis—not to join the party here—but I get those, too, for different reasons anddifferent angles—

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  It sort ofterrifies me that—I’m sort of an apologist and an evangelist and I never wantedto be either of those things and so are you—

Tom:  There’s nodoubt. 

Pete:  You’re anapologist for a different way of thinking and people are tracking with it.

Jared:  Not to breakup the pat on each other’s back—

Pete:  Jared, we’ll beback to you in a minute.  Can you—(laughter)

Jared:  Not to breakup the self-applause—

Pete:  The mutualadmiration society.  (laughter)

Jared:  I did want todraw us back to what we talked about at the beginning and maybe reframe it,which is to say, when we talk about the Bible, it really can’t happen—how weinterpret the Bible is inevitably wrapped up in what we think God is like.  I would just make an extra step that I’mhearing in the theme of this conversation is that we can’t make judgments aboutwhat God is like without our own experiences—

Pete:  Yes.

Jared:  —and there’s amixture—kind of an ad mixture of the Bible informs that, but our ownexperiences inform that—

Tom:  Definitely.

Jared:  —so there isthat important part of our theology that has to accept and integrate that our experiencesmatter and they’re not just a problem to be solved, but actually are perhaps aSpirit-guided process in this shift and how theology can and must and necessarilychange over the generations.

Tom:  Yeah.  I totally agree.  Let me give you an illustration of how myparticular experience then allowed me go back to the Bible and see it and readit differently.  I was moving to thisview that maybe God can’t do some things. I thought to myself, “That’s obviously not in the Bible.”

Then I thought, “Hold on a second.  Let me read the Bible again.”  (laughter) I started running across all kinds of interesting passages.  The writer of Hebrews says, “God can’t tell alie.”  James says, “God can’t betempted.”  The Psalmist says, “God can’tgrow tired.”  There’s a really greatpassage in the Old Testament in which the Israelites are fighting against someother nation, (maybe you know it Pete) and they say that the other nations havethese iron munitions of some sort and therefore, “the Lord can’t conquerthem.”—

Pete:  Right.  Yes. Exactly.

Tom:  —There’s allkinds of weird things going on.  But thisone passage especially has been important to me.  It’s in Paul’s letter to Timothy.  Paul says, “When we are faithless, God isfaithful because God cannot deny Himself.” I have then begun to work with this idea, “Look, if God can’t deny God’sown self, and God is love, God must love. Maybe this love is self-giving, others-empowering, uncontrolling?”  That might become a clue on how we mightrethink God’s power in light of God’s love.

I still think God’s powerful.  I just don’t think that God has the kind ofcontrolling or single-handed determination that many people have thought Godhas.

40:29

Pete:  Also, that Godwould lay down that power.

Tom:  Yeah.

Pete:  I don’t want toget into this thing that you said earlier that you disagree with and I thinkyou’re right that God just accommodates to different ways of thinking.  I’m thinking here of a book that I’m tryingto finish by William Placker, I think is how you pronounce it—

Tom:  Oh yeah.  Yeah. Yeah.

Pete:  Narratives of a Vulnerable God—

Tom:  Yes. 

Pete:  —which is like,“God is laying down the prerogatives.” It’s like a kenosis.  It’s anemptying of God’s self and to be vulnerable. That’s the primary way, which I think is love—

Tom:  I know too.

Pete:  That’s aprimary way for God to express God’s love.

Tom:  What makes myview different from Placker’s and many other kenotic theologians is that theythink that God voluntarily gives up this power as if God could have retained itand perhaps, sometimes does.

My view says that God’s very nature is this self-givinglove.  This very nature is kenotic.  In fact, I call my view “essentialkenosis.”  That means that thisself-giving is, we might say, involuntary rather than voluntary.  In other words, because God’s very nature isself-giving love and God must God, God can’t deny Himself to quote the apostlePaul, that means his self-giving limitation, we might say, is something Godnecessarily does because God is necessarily loving.

Pete:  Almost like agood parent.

Tom:  Yes.  Yes. (laughter)  I use the parentinganalogy a lot because some people say, “Well, your God is not in control.  That means your God is doing nothing.”  I say, “Well, you know, a good parent isneither manipulative or absent.  A goodparent is influential.  A good parent isthere, prodding you, calling you and even sometimes, commanding you to do whatis the right thing, but not trying to control you like a helicopter parent noralso absent, never around.”

Jared: Excellent.  Unfortunately, Tom, weare coming to the end of our time.  Ireally appreciate all of the new ways to think about the Bible and God andthere’s a lot to chew on.

Before we go, are there projects you’re working on or thingsyou can point people to, to learn more about some of your views.

Tom:  I’ve writtenquite a few things, but the book that’s probably most helpful is one that justcame out in 2019 that I’m happy to say has been a best-seller.  It has this provocative title, God Can’t – How to Believe in God and LoveAfter Tragedy, Abuse and Other Evils.” 

In this particular book, I lay out what I think are fiveaspects to wrestling with the problems of suffering and evil and stillbelieving that there is a god who does stuff and whose loving.

I would recommend that book. 

If you’re more into the scholarly stuff, a previous book Iwrote is called The Uncontrolling Love ofGod, which also addresses these issues.

Jared:  Are there wayspeople can find you online if they want to interact with you further?

Tom:  Definitely.  I have a website that’s my full name:  thomasjayoord.com.  I’m on the various social mediachannels.  If you’d like to know moreabout this idea of a god is who is relational and who experiences time like wedo, you might check out the organization called the Center for Open andRelational Theology, of which I’m a director. 

I love to engage with folks who have questions about theseissues that I’ve been throwing at you today.

Pete:  Yeah.  That’s great.

Jared:  Well, thankyou.  Thank you so much, again, Tom, fortaking some time and explaining some complicated things to us in ways that Ithink everybody’s gonna appreciate.

Pete:  Yeah.  Really helpful.

Tom:  Hey.  It’s been my pleasure.

Pete:  Great Tom.

Jared:  Allright.  See ya.

(Jaunty Exit Music)

Pete:  Hey folks.  Thanks for listening, again, to anotherepisode of the podcast.  Hope you enjoyedit.  Hope you have a chance to check outTom’s books and maybe find him online like he said.

Jared:  If you want tofind us online, you can find a lot of things on Patreon.  We are still in the midst of ourcampaign.  We are less than 100 peoplefrom reaching our goal of 1,611 patrons. So, go to the Bible for Normal People on Patreon:  patreon.com/thebiblefornormalpeople.  Hope to see you there.  We’ll see you later.

Pete:  We’ll see youlater, folks, as always.

Jared:  I wanted tosay, “Check you later,” in a Matthew McConaughey “Dazed and Confused” style.

Pete:  We’re not thatcool.

Jared:  Yeah.

Pete:  See you folks.

Jared:  Allright.  See ya.

[/bg_collapse]