The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)

Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Trinity: Defining Love

Thomas Jay Oord’s Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement is bizarre.  He draws on physical and social sciences in his effort to define love, has a chapter on love and biology and love and cosmology, talks about kenosis a good deal, and concludes with a chapter outlining “A Theology of Love Informed by the Sciences.”

For all the talk about kenosis as essential to God’s character, the self-emptying Oord has in mind is always a self-emptying and self-limitation in relation to some creation or another.  The index has only one lone reference to the Trinity, and that’s in a footnote.

This leads him to some odd conclusions, and produces odd tensions.  He wants to affirm God’s freedom, and wants to say that the world is itself a product of love, but he has dispensed with the traditional theological means for underwriting that freedom, namely, creation ex nihilo.  Instead, he argues that God necessarily exists, but that He necessarily exists in relation to a world.  The freedom of God’s love consists not in “that” he loves, but in “how” he loves.  He might have created a different world, but He could not not have created.  Oord bites the bullet of this account, acknowledging that such a God is “influenced by the ups and downs, joys and sorrows, sins and loves of others,” but somehow His “eternal nature is fixed.  God’s nature is love, and that nature never alters.”

Christian theology has always had ways to affirm both that God is the Lord Creator and that He is compassionate and sympathetic.  The doctrine of the Trinity has been central to the task of harmonizing those two, apparently paradoxical, confessions.  Oord has tried to define Love without much attention to the Father, Son, and Spirit whose life is a communion of love.