Defining Love for Theology

Okay, I genuinely don't know how many times Tom Oord has been on this podcasttwenty plus times, but this one felt different, because Tom has officially done the thing: he wrote a Systematic Theology of Love, Volume One, which is also his 50th book, which means his wife has had to endure approximately 50 different versions of "another love book." We dug into what makes this project unusual — a progressive, open relational systematic theology organized around love as its orienting concept, built on abductive reasoning rather than deductive certainty, which turns out to matter a lot when the thing you're centering is inherently vulnerable, risky, and relational. Tom walked us through his claim that God is a universal spirit who is genuinely material without having a localized body, why he's done with creatio ex nihilo and what his very Latin replacement actually means, the distinction between animate organisms and inanimate aggregates (rocks, it turns out, are great for explaining panpsychism), and why he's invented a new word — Gino-Theology — to talk about God as a dynamic becoming rather than a static being. We also covered why he thinks Whitehead solved both the problem of evil and the problem of good, what he's planning for Volume Two around Christology and divine hiddenness, and ended up somewhere around the enchantment of the universe. The chat had 140 people. Tom's substack has chapters. And Volume Two starts in the fall — get in early.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube⁠

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⁠Thomas Jay Oord⁠ is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. He is an award-winning author, and he has written or edited more than twenty-five books. Oord directs a ⁠doctoral program⁠ at Northwind Theological Seminary and the ⁠Center for Open and Relational Theology⁠. He won the Outstanding Faculty Award twelve times as a full-time professor and now speaks at institutions across the globe. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, and freedom and relationships for transformation.

• ⁠Love at the Center: Tom Oord’s Systematic Theology Project⁠
• ⁠A Journey of Faith and Integrity⁠
• ⁠Faith without Certainty⁠
• ⁠Big God Questions⁠
• ⁠Christ, Christmas, & the Incarnation⁠
• ⁠the Death of Omnipotence!⁠
• ⁠Brian McLaren & Thomas Jay Oord: a God Worthy of Love⁠
• ⁠Process This!⁠
• ⁠Process Theology QnA⁠
• ⁠Authority, Atonement, Abortion, and a Big Hug⁠
• ⁠from Pluriform Love to Divine Revelation⁠
• ⁠Big God Twitter Takes⁠
• ⁠Trump is (NOT) a Process Theologian & Other Questions⁠
• ⁠Thomas Jay Oord wants you to know “God Can’t”⁠
• ⁠Open and Relational Theology Throwdown⁠
• ⁠Open and Relational Q&A with Thomas Jay Oord⁠
• ⁠Why Go Wesleyan?⁠

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