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In his provocative article, “Psychology’s Love-Hate Relationship with Love,” Alan Tjeltveit says the following: “Christian psychologists’ contributions to understanding love of God and neighbor have fallen far short of their potential.”^[1] While Christians often say love is central to their faith, they act in their professional lives and scholarship as if they hate love.

The reasons for this love-hate relationship and for why Christian psychologists have fallen short of their potential, says Tjeltveit, vary. In his article, Tjeltveit lists a number of reasons Christian psychologists avoid the topic of love, despite their saying they are deeply committed to love’s importance. I list seven here drawn from various portions of Tjeltveit’s provocative article.

1. 1. Some Christians avoid love research, because they want to gain respectability for their field. Studying love is not a respectable scientific endeavor.
   2. Some Christian psychologists seem unwilling to explore love research, because love has been ill defined or defined variously. This lack of clarity is especially relevant in claims about how God may influence creaturely love. But it is also present in deciding whether love is an emotion, an action, a desire, requires relations, pertains to what is good, etc.
   3. Some Christian psychologists avoid research related to biblical views of love, because some biblical views are metaphysically oriented. For example, Paul talks the Holy Spirit pouring love into our hearts (Rm. 5:5) and that we are capable of love only because God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:18). Such psychologists see their work pertaining to interpersonal or ethical issues, not metaphysical ones.
   4. Some Christian psychologists avoid love research, because such research has primarily to do with values. Such researchers believe they cannot rightfully be deemed scientists if they pursue values rather than facts.
   5. Some Christian psychologists are reluctant to accept as accurate claims about love. They believe the skepticism inherent in science requires this reluctance. And some attempt to carry their hermeneutics of suspicion to its ultimate end.
   6. Some Christian psychologists believe love harms people. The woman who stays with her abusive husband because she says she loves him supports the worry some psychologists have that love is not the kind of activity we should promote.
   7. Some Christian psychologists have been reluctant to pursue love research, because they believe such research is only possible using “soft” or “qualitative” methods of science. Soft methods include literary analysis, personal testimony, theological interpretation, ethical analysis, and so forth. In general, scientists most respect the hard or quantitative methods, because these methods are perceived as being objective.^[2]

Despite these reasons, Tjeltveit argues that most Christian psychologists would say they are, at a personal level, deeply committed to love. Most believe the themes of love are central to Scripture and Christian faith. They believe love is a part of if not central to Christian ethics. Christian psychologists may even say love – understood as some form of beneficence – resides at the heart of their chosen profession: psychology. In addition, Christian psychologists with interests in virtue theory and character development, says Tjeltveit, have added reasons to be committed to love, because many such claims pertain to what Christians variously call spiritual formation, discipleship, theosis, Christlikeness, or Christian character.^[3]

I believe Wesleyan theologies can help psychologists – especially psychologists with Wesleyan theological sympathies and/or those living in Wesleyan communities – respond well to reasons why some Christian psychologists have failed to pursue love research. For this essay, I will argue Wesleyan theology and Wesleyan theologians offer resources to Christian psychologists to overcome some obstacles preventing them from pursuing research on love. In doing so, they can integrate some of the best of Wesleyan theology with pertinent issues in psychology of love research.

Wesleyan Resources for Integrating Insights from Psychology and Theology

Wesleyan theology has sometimes been called a theology of love.^[4] John Wesley championed love as a central divine attribute, and he characterized the holy life as one devoted to loving God and loving others as oneself. Wesley’s language of love was not always consistent, but he argued that the mature Christian develops a character and “tempers” grounded in love.

In what follows, I explore issues of love as a Wesleyan theologian. The writings of John Wesley and my experience as a member of Wesleyan-oriented communities influence this exploration. These resources also influence my own love proposals. I begin what follows by defining love; I subsequently explore John Wesley’s thoughts on love. I argue that Wesley’s theology of love – with important qualifications – is fruitful for theories and practices of psychology.^[5] Along the way, I offer interpretations and proposals of my own in the hope that Wesley’s views of love and my own might together prove helpful for Christian psychologists considering the issues of love.

Defining Love

When it comes to one obstacle for psychological research on love – defining love well and using that definition consistently – John Wesley is not particularly helpful. He fails to define love well. And careful readers will find his use of “love” inconsistent and sometimes confusing. Ironically, Wesley’s frequent use of the biblical love language is partly responsible for this lack of clarity. Biblical authors are inconsistent in their love language.

I do believe it possible, however, to offer a definition of love consonant with the general way Wesley uses the word. The following definition is my own, and I intend for it to be useful to theologians, social scientists (especially psychologists), philosophers, and even those pursuing some research in the natural sciences.

I define love as follows…

To love is act intentionally, in sympathetic/empathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being.

While I doubt words fully capture what we want to say about love, I believe this definition is better than competitors and much better than no definition at all. I have written extensively on this definition elsewhere.^[6] To explain it briefly here, I offer short comments on its key phrases.

Acting intentionally – When I say love involves intentional action, I mean at least the following four things. First, love is not accidental or unintended. Second, love requires freedom. Entirely determined creatures cannot love. The freedom of love is limited, however, because freedom is always restricted to some degree. Third, love involves motives. While we are likely never conscious of all our motives, an act of love has as its primary motive the promotion of well-being in some particular expression. Fourth, love involves a degree of desire. While love is more than mere desire, desire always plays a role – in one way or another – in expressions of love.

Sympathetic/empathetic response to others – The second phrase in my definition emphasizes relationality. To say love involves sympathetic/empathetic response to others, including God, is to stress the relational nature of love. Whether we are conscious of it or not, our relation to God is primary. The “others” to whom we respond vary greatly. These others can be factors or persons in our environment, our own histories, or even the habits and members of our own bodies.

To promote overall well-being – The most common biblical meaning of love pertains to promoting well-being. According to Scripture, for instance, to love is to do good: to be a blessing, promote happiness, embrace God’s loving leadership in the Kingdom of God, live abundant life, benefit others or enjoy mutual benefit, and/or help those in need. The list of ways in which biblical writers use “love” to talk about promoting well-being is long and diverse.

Unfortunately, some theologians use “love” as a synonym for desire, devotion, or relationship. Desire, devotion, or relationship do not necessarily pertain to doing good, however. We can desire consequences we know are evil or sinful. To overcome these limitations, I emphasize love as the promotion of well-being in my definition. In doing so, I follow the general biblical way of talking about “love” as doing good, without denying the role of desire, devotion, or relationships.^[7]

To speak of promoting overall well-being also provides a conceptual basis for speaking coherently about loving ourselves. Love isn’t just about doing good to others. After all, each of us is part of the “overall” in promoting overall well-being, and sometimes we need to promote our own good as part of promoting the overall good. Of course, love may also require us to act self-sacrificially at times. When we do, we at least partially undermine our own well-being for the sake of the common good.

John Wesley and Love as Doing Good

In the majority of his writings and sermons, Wesley follows dominant love language in the Bible by simply using the word “love,” without qualification, to talk about promoting well-being. Love is “benevolence,” he says, “tender good-will to all the souls that God has made.”^[8] The person who loves is one who blesses others, benefits others, enjoys mutual benefit, or overcomes evil with good.^[9]

But Wesley occasionally prefaces love with “perfect” or “cold,” qualifications that occur rarely in the Bible. Sometimes, he uses the phrase “holy love,” a qualification not found at all in Scripture. Some Wesleyan scholars today speak of “holy love” to counter a popular view that love as sentimental and soft.^[10] I do not advocate this linguistic practice, however, because I think all love is holy, in the sense that God is love’s source and inspiration.

Doing good is the “nature” of love, says Wesley. But he also thinks love takes various forms and produces diverse fruit. For instance, we often express love by choosing humility, gentleness, patience, self-control, etc.^[11] We express love by helping the poor, being kind to strangers, encouraging those in the community of faith, forgiving one another, etc. All of these acts promote well-being. While the essence of love is singular, expressions of love are plural.

When love is understood essentially as promoting well-being – i.e., doing good – Wesley’s general statements about love and theology make sense. He considers love the heart of true faith: “Religion is the love of God and our neighbour, that is, every man under heaven.” This means “love ruling the whole life, animating all our tempers and passions, directing all our thoughts, words, and actions.”^[12] Statements such as these provide a basis for regarding Wesley a premiere theologian of love.

God is the Source of Love

Although Wesley read and recommended the best science and philosophy of his day, he drew primarily from the Bible when constructing his theology. He was a biblical theologian, because the Bible was his primary resource for matters pertaining to salvation.^[13] This practice of appealing first to Scripture shaped his views of love and of God as love’s source.

Like virtually all theologians, Wesley drew more from some Bible books and passages than others when constructing his theology.^[14] He prized the Apostle John’s first epistle more than other books in the Bible.^[15] The book offers what he believed a profound and central Christian claim, “God is love” (4:8, 16). Those who think some biblical passage or another opposes love, says Wesley, are guilty of invalid interpretation: “No Scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works.”^[16] Wesley used this hermeneutic of love in various arguments, sermons, letters, and hymns.

The Apostle John’s first epistle also provides what Wesley thought was the sum of the gospel: we love, because God first loved us (4:19).^[17] The verse emphasizes God as the source of love creatures express. “Love of our neighbour springs from the love of God,” he writes.^[18] John’s letter also emphasizes that God can transform human lives so that sin need no longer reign in them. Based on this passage and others, Wesley believed that love excludes sin.^[19] To put it another way, to sin is to fail to respond appropriately to God’s call to love.^[20]

Wesley believed creaturely love emerges from awareness – explicit or implicit – of God’s love. “It is in consequence of our knowing God loves us,” says Wesley, “that we love him and love our neighbour as ourselves. Gratitude towards our Creator cannot but produce benevolence to our fellow creatures.” The love we find in Christ “constrains us not only to be harmless, to do no ill to our neighbour,” Wesley argues, “but to be useful, to be ‘zealous of good works;’ ‘as we have time, to do good unto all men.’”^[21] In these passages and others, Wesley’s language of love fits my own definition of love as entailing the promotion of well-being.

God is not only the source of our love, argues Wesley, God also enables or empowers us to love. But to express this love, says Wesley, we must cooperate. We must be “workers together with him,” he says, citing the Apostle Paul.^[22] God “will not save us unless we ‘save ourselves from this untoward generation;’ unless we ourselves ‘fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life;’ unless we ‘agonize to enter in at the strait gate,’ ‘deny ourselves, and take up our cross daily,’ and labour, by every possible means, to ‘make our own calling and election sure.’”^[23] The biblical phrases in this quote all emphasize the cooperative role humans must play.

Because of God’s empowering grace, we can work out our own salvation and continue “the work of faith, in the patience of hope, and in the labour of love.”^[24] Wesleyan scholar, Randy L. Maddox, calls Wesley’s belief that a loving God invites our cooperating response “responsible grace.”^[25] God empowers the possibility of creaturely cooperation. This emphasis upon a necessary creaturely contribution distinguishes Wesleyan theologies of love from theologies in other Christian and nonChristian traditions.^[26]

Love and Freedom in Wesleyan Theology

John Wesley emphasizes creaturely freedom – what he typically called “liberty” – and its relation to love. He believes the Calvinist doctrine of predestination undermines the Christian logic of love, because it denies that Christians freely participate in the work of salvation. “The God of love is willing to save all the souls that he has made,” argues Wesley. “But he will not force them to accept of it; he leaves them in the hands of their own counsel.”^[27] God “strongly and sweetly influenc[es] all,” says Wesley, “and yet without destroying the liberty of his rational creatures.”^[28]

Creaturely freedom is not self-derived, however. Wesley argues that God gives freedom to creatures. One of Wesley’s most important sermons, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” takes a portion of a Pauline letter as its text: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that works in you, both to will and to do his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13). In light of this passage, Wesley says, “the very first motion of good is from above, as well as the power which conducts it to the end.”

This initial work of divine love is what Wesley called “preventing” grace, or what is now commonly called “prevenient grace.”^[29] This is God’s grace – active divine love – preceding creaturely response. “Through the grace of God assisting me,” says Wesley, “I have a power to choose and do good as well as evil.”^[30] Because God first acts on our behalf, says Wesley, we can and must respond to work out our salvation.^[31]

Wesley believed Christians are not the only ones whom God’s prevenient grace blesses with the possibility of love. God offers all people “some measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world.” “Heathens, Mahometans, and Jews,” says Wesley, “still retain (notwithstanding many mistakes) that faith that worketh by love.”^[32] This means “no man sins because he has not grace,” says Wesley; he sins “because he does not use the grace which he hath.”^[33] Wesley’s notion of universal prevenient grace grounds a view of inclusivism in response to those of other religious traditions.

Can a Loving God Take Away Creaturely Freedom?

In my own theological research, I have explored the question of God’s ability to take away creaturely freedom. To be more precise, I have asked whether God has the ability to fail to provide, withdraw, or override the freedom and/or agency God gives. This question resides at the heart of a number of theological conundrums, such as the problem of evil, the unjust distribution of resources and opportunities, biblical inerrancy, and the relation between science and religion. In the name of love, I have argued that God cannot take away the freedom and/or agency God grants to creatures.

I call my own position on this matter, “essential kenosis theology.”^[34] This view says God necessarily gives freedom and/or agency to creatures, because God’s eternal and unchanging nature of love requires this ongoing giving. God is not voluntarily self-limited, according to essential kenosis theology. But outside forces or laws also do not limit God. God is involuntarily self-limited, because God’s eternal nature is love. God must love; God cannot not love. And part of what it means for God to love is that God necessarily provides freedom and/or agency to others that cannot be negated.

Essential kenosis theology resolves many questions in Christian theology. Perhaps the most crucial is the question why a loving God fails to prevent genuine evil. According to essential kenosis theology, God cannot prevent genuine evil, because creatures to whom God necessarily grants freedom and/or agency can choose evil.^[35] Essential kenosis also resolves other questions about divine revelation, distribution of goods, and the explanatory conflict between science and theology, but I will not develop the answers here.^[36]

I am uncertain whether John Wesley would affirm the essential kenosis theology I propose. Wesley generally construed God’s power in terms of empowerment rather than total control or overpowerment.^[37] In a sermon on God’s providence, Wesley sounds like he would endorse something like my theology of essential kenosis: “Were human liberty taken away,” says Wesley, “men would be as incapable of virtue as stones. Therefore (with reverence be it spoken) the Almighty himself cannot do this thing. He cannot thus contradict himself or undo what he has done.”^[38] In this passage, Wesley seems to agree with the basis of my assertion that God cannot withdraw, override, or fail to provide freedom and/or agency to others. But other passages in Wesley’s corpus are less supportive of my own position.

An essential kenosis understanding of divine power obviously differs from those describing God as exerting always or even occasionally the kind of sovereignty that entirely controls creatures or situations. It offers important resources for overcoming the problem of evil and emphasizing the moral responsibility of free creatures. Wesley was keen to emphasize the importance of freedom for creaturely decision-making. But he did not follow the logic of freedom and love to provide an adequate answer to the problem of evil.

Are We God’s Slaves or God’s Family?

John Wesley’s view of divine love makes a psychological difference in how Christians perceive themselves in relation to God. The logic of his view leads away from versions of eternal security typical of some theologies. The logic of love and freedom insists that creatures must themselves decide to respond appropriately to God, although Wesley claimed that this possibility for decision was itself derived from God’s initial – prevenient – actions.

Instead of what many today call “eternal security,” Wesley stressed what he called, “Christian assurance.” This assurance was not based upon God’s sovereign election of some for salvation. It was based instead upon the assurance God loves us all. Because God’s name and nature are love, we can be confident God loves us all the time.^[39]

Wesley makes a distinction between those who consider themselves God’s slaves and those who consider themselves God’s children. Both types of people are Christian. But those who consider themselves children are assured of God’s love and “follow the more excellent way.” Christians should “rest not till that [Spirit of adoption] clearly witnesses with your spirit that you are a child of God,” says Wesley.^[40] Christians should “cry to God that he would reveal his Son in [their] hearts, to the intent [they] may be no more servants but sons, having his love shed abroad in [their] hearts, and walking in ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God.’”^[41] As one who loves us, God is “the Parent of all good”^[42] and our own “Parent and Friend.”^[43] And we can feel the love of this Godly parent in our hearts.

Those who know themselves to be children of God act differently. They “walk in all the good works whereunto [they] are created in Christ Jesus.” Those who consider themselves God’s children attain “a measure of perfect love.” God “enables [them] to love him with all [their] heart and with all [their] soul.” Being assured of God’s love, they “go forward” in the faith, listening to “the voice of God to the children of Israel, to the children of God.’”^[44]

Considering ourselves children of God makes a psychological difference and, therefore, a practical difference in how we live. I believe a contemporary psychology research program could build upon the slave vs. son/daughter distinction Wesley makes. The program could ask Christians a series of questions to establish how each saw their own identities in relation to God. A separate set of questions might ask for self-reports or friend reports about how and to what frequency those being studied express the fruit of spirit, acts of mercy, or virtuous attitudes and habits. Wesley would not be surprised if this research demonstrated that those who consider themselves members of God’s family instead of God’s slaves more consistently lived lives of love.

Relational Community and Love

In my own definition of love noted earlier, I stressed the importance of relationships and the “other.” This stress highlights the importance of how Christians think about the individual and community in light of Christian faith.

Wesley saw the importance of both community and personal accountability. For Wesley, “Christianity is essentially a social religion.” He believed “that to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it.” He clarifies the importance of community when he says that Christianity “cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other men.”^[45]

Wesley’s view of the importance of community for love comes out clearly in his sermon, “On Schism.” “To separate ourselves from a body of living Christians, with whom we were before united, is a grievous breach of the law of love,” says Wesley. He continues:

It is the nature of love to unite us together; and the greater the love, the stricter the union. And while this continues in its strength, nothing can divide those whom love has united. It is only when our love grows cold, that we can think of separating from our brethren. And this is certainly the case with any who willingly separate from their Christian brethren. The pretences for separation may be innumerable, but want of love is always the real cause; otherwise they would still hold the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. It is therefore contrary to all those commands of God wherein brotherly love is enjoined: To that of St. Paul, “Let brotherly love continue;”–that of St. John, “My beloved children, love one another;”–and especially to that of our blessed Master, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” Yea, “By this,” saith he, “shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.”^[46]

Of course, Wesley often appealed to individuals to express love. As a theologian living in and influenced by the Enlightenment, he affirmed the role of personal agency. He believed individuals possess a degree of liberty when responding to God’s activity in light of and under the influence of other pressures.^[47] But he believed strongly the interconnectedness between individuals and Christian community was both essential to love and a gauge of how well Christians love.^[48] This Wesleyan interconnectedness has proven a valuable conceptual resource for Wesleyan Christians today as they ponder the symbiotic relationship between persons and community.^[49]

Wesley’s Circle of Love

In a world of limited resources and multiple obligations, lovers must decide which recipients they will give their God-derived good gifts. Theologian Thomas Aquinas talks about the tensions that arise as “orders of love,” whereby the lover usually has greater obligations to some (e.g., family members) and others (e.g., strangers). Scholars in contemporary science and theology discussion of love sometimes appeal to Aquinas’s orders of love model both to support and criticize evolutionary theories.^[50]

Like most theologians, Wesley thought God loved everyone. His favorite verse to talk about God’s universal love was Psalm 145:9, “The Lord is loving to every [person], and his mercy is over all his works.”^[51] And Wesley thought his readers ought to love God and their neighbors as themselves.

Wesley did not devote significant attention to resolving the conflicts that arise when choosing between various obligations. Following the Apostle John, he argued for “a peculiar love which we owe to those that love God.”^[52] By this, he meant a special love for fellow Christians. But Wesley also emphasized love of enemies, strangers and the downtrodden – what he called “works of mercy.”^[53] “The love of our “neighbour naturally leads all that feel it to works of mercy,” says Wesley. “It inclines us to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to visit them that are sick or in prison; to be as eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame; an husband to the widow, a father to the fatherless.”^[54]

Wesley did envision a kind of ordering love, but it differed from the one Aquinas envisioned. Wesley explains this ordering in terms of a series of concentric circles with love in the center. These circles represented the centrality of love for the person and the expressions derived from love. He puts it this way:

“In a Christian believer love sits upon the throne which is erected in the inmost soul; namely, love of God and man, which fills the whole heart, and reigns without a rival. In a circle near the throne are all holy tempers; - longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, fidelity, temperance; and if any other were comprised in “the mind which was in Christ Jesus.” In an exterior circle are all the works of mercy, whether to the souls or bodies of men. By these we exercise all holy tempers- by these we continually improve them, so that all these are real means of grace, although this is not commonly adverted to. Next to these are those that are usually termed works of piety - reading and hearing the word, public, family, private prayer, receiving the Lord’s supper, fasting or abstinence. Lastly, that his followers may the more effectually provoke one another to love, holy tempers, and good works, our blessed Lord has united them together in one body, the church, dispersed all over the earth - a little emblem of which, of the church universal, we have in every particular Christian congregation.”^[55]

We might illustrate Wesley’s vision of the Christian who loves like this:

This diagram not only shows the centrality of love itself. It also reveals that love for those in need often lay closer to the center of Christian commitment than either pious love expressions or love for fellow believers in the Church. But the model serves best to showcase Wesley’s emphasis upon the kind of person who develops a life of love.

The “Tempers” of Love as Developing Virtuous Character

The foregoing circles illustration highlights the importance of what Wesley called “tempers” or “holy tempers.” Today, we might call these dispositions, habits, attitudes, or character. Wesley’s emphasis upon developing holy tempers identifies the importance he placed not just on loving in a particular moment but on becoming a loving person.^[56]

In response to God’s grace, the Christian can develop holy tempers as evidenced in a guileless character. The mature lover has “real, genuine, solid virtue,” says Wesley. This holy character develops when love and truth “unite in the essence of virtue or holiness.”^[57]

Wesley took pains to distinguish his own position on love from that of moral philosopher Frances Hutcheson. While Wesley believed humans are capable of benevolence and could develop virtuous characters, he disagreed when Hutcheson claimed this capacity is innate in humans. Benevolence and holy characters can only be developed in response to God’s initial working: we only love because God first loved us. Christians ought to work with God – co-operate – to develop loving characters. This capacity is God-derived, not innate: “Whoever improves the grace he has already received, whoever increases in the love of God, will surely retain it,” says Wesley. “God will continue, yea, will give it more abundantly; whereas whoever does not improve this talent cannot possibly retain it.”^[58]

Early in his life, Wesley highlighted holiness in the Christian life, or what he called “Christian perfection.”^[59] The heart of holiness and perfection, as he understood them, was love. “What is holiness?” he asks rhetorically. “Is it not essentially love? the love of God, and of all mankind? … Love is holiness wherever it exists.”^[60] Of Christian perfection, he says, “the sum of Christian perfection…is all comprised in that one word, Love. The first branch of it is the love of God: And as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”…these contain the whole of Christian perfection.”^[61]

The mature Christian develops habits of holiness, and this maturity allows the Christian to perceive the world differently than before. The Christian “is enabled to taste, as well as to see, how gracious the Lord is…. He finds Jesus’ love is far better than wine, yea sweeter than honey or the honeycomb.… He feels the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto him; or, as our Church expresses it, ‘feels the workings of the Spirit of God in his heart.’”^[62]

Recent work in Wesleyan theology and psychology has explored the role of affections in moral psychology.^[63] While not negating the importance of cognition and rational decision making, Wesleyan scholars argue that morality stems in greater degree our responses to others in light of our own affections, emotions, dispositions, tempers, and/or character. This moral psychology draws from Wesley’s emphasis upon the “inmost soul” or “heart,” from which he believed beneficence and virtue “continually spring forth.”^[64]

In his seminal work, Randy Maddox describes the transformation of the heart or tempers Wesley envisioned in his theological anthropology. It begins with the believer experiencing the love of God: “We cannot love God, till we know he loves us,” says Wesley.^[65] This experience is seated in the Christian’s affections or tempers, and it is from this seat that the Christian can respond appropriately or inappropriately to God’s initial love. “The key value of the strange warming of our heart in Wesley’s mature heart religion,” says Maddox, “was that it created the possibility of a responsive heart.”^[66] This means, says Maddox, that “the problem of sin must ultimately be addressed at the affectional level.”^[67] Change of the affect, tempers, or heart required more than rational decision. Wesley insisted that Christians be participate in the means of grace, Christian practices and disciplines, worship and Eucharist, and activity in the community of Christ.

The transformation of the heart was so central to Wesley’s theology that he considered it more important than affirming correct theological ideas. “I believe the merciful God regards the lives and tempers of men more than their ideas,” said Wesley. “I believe [God] respects the goodness of the heart rather than the clearness of the head.”^[68]

Love’s End: Happiness

My definition of love proposed at the outset has a decidedly teleological nature.^[69] Love telos – the intentional promotion of overall well-being – suggests a eudemonic ethic. This fits nicely with Wesley’s own belief that the Christian life of love brings authentic happiness. In fact, this love-centered happiness is the ultimate goal of religion. ^[70]

To the question, “For what end did God create man,” the Westminster Catechism answered, “To glorify God and praise him forever.” Wesley thought people ought to adopt a different answer: “You are made to be happy in God.”^[71] God meant for humans to enjoy this happiness on both heaven and earth. For “to bless men, to make men happy,” says Wesley, “was the great business for which our Lord came into the world.”^[72]

Happiness comes from both loving God and neighbor. “Is it misery to love God? to give Him my heart who alone is worthy of it?” Wesley asks rhetorically. “Nay, it is the truest happiness; indeed, the only true happiness which is to be found under the sun.” And he asks, “Does anyone imagine, the love of our neighbour is misery; even the loving every man as our own soul? So far from it, that, next to the love of God, this affords the greatest happiness of which we are capable.”^[73] In fact, the loving sympathy with the neighbor in distress, says Wesley, “actually contributes to the Christian’s genuine happiness.”^[74]

This love of God and neighbor resides as the heart of Christianity and the ultimate reason for our existence. Such love is “the happiness for which we were made.” It begins in the love of God shed in our hearts, develops in a loving character – tempers – formed in relation to the Spirit, and finds evidence in the testimony of Christian’s works of love expressed in the world.^[75] For this reason, love is “the queen of all graces, the highest perfection in earth or heaven, the very image of the invisible God, as in men below, so in angels above.”^[76]

The happiness love brings is meant to be shared. “If you love mankind, it is your one design, desire, and endeavour to spread virtue and happiness all around you,” says Wesley. This involves acting “to lessen the present sorrows, and increase the joys, of every child of man; and, if it be possible, to bring them with you to the rivers of pleasure that are at God’s right hand for evermore.”^[77] Christians are “zealous of good works,” and they imitate their Master by “going about doing good.”^[78]

Conclusion

I hope to have shown in this essay that John Wesley’s theology of love can be a helpful resource to Christians in general and psychologists in particular. Along the way, I added my own love proposals in my attempt to expand or strengthen Wesley’s own work. Working from a clear definition of love that coheres with typical love language and Wesley’s typical use of “love” helps us understand both the centrality of love for Wesley and the potential importance for love in contemporary psychology research and practice.

Notes

1. Alan C. Tjeltveit, “Psychology’s Love-Hate Relationship with Love: Critiques, Affirmations, and Christian Reponses,” Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34:1 (2006), 8. ↑

2. Ibid., 9-16. ↑

3. Ibid., 14-15. ↑

4. Mildred Bangs Wynkoop wrote one of the most important books on this subject: A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 1972). ↑

5. For material addressing Wesleyan theology and psychology, see M Kathryn Armistead, Brad D. Strawn, and Ronald W. Wright, eds. Wesleyan Theology and Social Science: The Dance of Practice Divinity and Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). Essays in the volume cover a variety of topics, but those particularly related to the relationship of Wesleyan theology and psychology include Randy L. Maddox, “Wesleyan Theology and Moral Psychology: Precedents for Continuing Engagement,” 7-20, and Ronald W. Wright, “Serving the Cause of Christ: Wesley’s ‘Experimental Religion’ and Psychology, 35-52. See Douglas Hardy, “Implicit Theologies in Psychologies: Claiming Experience as an Authoritative Source for Theologizing,” Cross Currents, 53:3 (Fall 2003): 368-377. See Warren S Brown, “Resonance: A Model for Relating Science, Psychology, and Faith,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23:2 (2004): 110-120. ↑

6. See Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010); The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis: Chalice, 2010), The Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being (Philadelphia: Templeton Press, 2004), and several of my other books. ↑

7. In some biblical passages, “love” means desire or devotion. These passages are in the small minority, but they are present. Unfortunately, they have shaped influential Christian theologies in ways I find unhelpful and confusing. I soundly criticize Augustine, for instance, as one for whom “love” means desire or devotion instead of the doing of good (The Nature of Love, ch. 3). This use of “love,” I argue, negatively influences his Christian ethics and doctrine of God. ↑

8. Wesley, Sermon 91, “On Charity” §§1.2, Works, 3:295. ↑

9. Wesley, Sermon 91, “On Charity” §§1.7, Works, 3:298. ↑

10. Wesleyan theologian, H. Ray Dunning, advocates the use of “holy love” to describe God, because he believes “love is susceptible to being reduced to human sentimentality” (H. Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology [Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 1988], 194). Kenneth Collins adds “holy” to love, because he thinks the word alone is “soft, naively wishful, and likely self-indulgent” (Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace [Nashville: Abingdon, 2007], 9). I argue that the popular characterizations of love these theologians fear are far from love’s broad biblical meaning. Love, understood biblically, is not always soft, sentimental, or permissive. It sometimes brings division (Mt. 10:34-38). ↑

11. Wesley, Sermon 91, “On Charity” §§1.4, Works, 3:296. ↑

12. Wesley, Sermon 84, “The Most Important Question” §§3.2, Works, 3:189. ↑

13. For analysis of Wesley’s use of the Bible, see Scott J. Jones, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture (Nashville, Tn.: Kingswood, 1995) and Robert W. Wall, “Wesley as biblical interpreter,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 113-128. ↑

14. For an argument that pardoning and transforming love was Wesley’s hermeneutical key, see Randy L. Maddox, “John Wesley on the Bible: The Rule of Christian Faith, Practice, and Hope,” in The Bible Tells Me So: Reading the Bible as Scripture, Richard P. Thompson and Thomas Jay Oord, eds. (Nampa, ID: SacraSage, 2011). ↑

15. Wall, “Wesley as Biblical Interpreter,” 116-125. ↑

16. Sermon 110, “Free Grace,” §§26, Works, 3:556. ↑

17. Sermons, Vol. 5, Preface, §6, Works, 2:357. ↑

18. Wesley makes this argument often. See as one instance, Sermon 23, “Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” §1.1, Works, 510. ↑

19. Sermon 43, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” §§1.9, Works, 2:160. ↑

20. I argue this in a book I co-wrote with Michael Lodahl, Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 2005). Scott F. Grover and Brad D. Strawn offer a Wesleyan view of sin informed by psychology in “John Wesley and Psychological Research on the Unconscious: Toward a Reconceptualization of Wesleyan Sin,” Wesleyan Theology and Social Science, 129-142. As the title suggests, Grover and Strawn argue for the important role “tempers” or unconscious acts and dispositions play in sin. Christopher J. Adams also argues from a Wesleyan perspective that family systems theory can play an important role in understanding sin (“The Sins of the Father: Toward a Wesleyan Perspective of Family Systems,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 23:2 [2004]: 149-54). ↑

21. Wesley, Sermon 120, “The Unity of the Divine Being” §§17, Works, 4:67. ↑

22. 2 Cor. 6:1. ↑

23. Wesley, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” §§ 3.7, Works, 3:209. ↑

24. Wesley, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” §§ 3.8, Works, 3:209. ↑

25. Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1994). ↑

26. Anders Nygren’s theology of love stands in stark contrast to a Wesleyan theology on this point of creaturely cooperation and on other points. I point out problems in Nygren’s view in chapter two of my book, The Nature of Love. ↑

27. Wesley, Sermon 127, “The Wedding Garment,” §§ 19, Works, 4:148. ↑

28. Wesley, Sermon 118, “On the Omnipresence of God,” §§ 2.1, Works, 4:43. ↑

29. Wesley, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” §§ 1.4, Works, 3:203. ↑

30. Wesley, Sermon 116, “What is Man?” §§ 11, Works, 4:24. ↑

31. Michael Leffel develops the importance of prevenient grace for Wesleyan psychotherapy and spiritual formation from a Wesleyan perspective in “Prevenient Grace and the Re-Enchantment of Nature: Toward a Wesleyan Theology of Psychotherapy and Spiritual Formation,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 23:2 (2004): 130-39. ↑

32. Wesley, Sermon 84, “On Faith,” §§ 2.3, Works, 3:500. ↑

33. Wesley, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” §§ 3.4, Works, 3:207. ↑

34. For fuller explanations of essential kenosis theology, see by books The Nature of Love and Defining Love. ↑

35. This is one aspect of my five-fold solution to the problem of evil. The other aspects include God as the fellow-sufferer, God as healer, God as one who squeezes good from the bad God did not originally want, and God as one who calls us to cooperate in overcoming evil. I have offered this five-fold solution in a number of papers but have not yet published it in book form. ↑

36. On God necessarily giving freedom and agency to others and how that affects science and theology issues, see my article, “Love as a Methodological and Metaphysical Source for Science and Theology,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 45:1 (Spring 2010): 81-107. ↑

37. Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 55. ↑

38. Wesley, “On Divine Providence,” Sermon 67, §§ 15, Works, 2: 541. ↑

39. Ronald W. Wright, Greg Dimond, and Philip Budd argue from a psychological perspective for the importance of a person knowing on a deep level he or she is loved by God. The authors argue that this knowledge played an important part in the formation of Wesley’s own theology (“An Experienced Presence: An Intersubjective Perspective on John Wesley’s Early Theology,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 23:2 [2004]: 155-64). ↑

40. Wesley, Sermon 84, “On Faith,” §§ 1.13, Works, 3:498. ↑

41. Ibid., §§ 2.5, Works, 3:500. ↑

42. “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” §§ 20, Works, Jackson edition, vol. 8. ↑

43. “Advice to the People Called Methodists,” Works Jackson edition, vol. 8. ↑

44. Ibid., §§ 2.5, Works, 3:500-501. ↑

45. Wesley, Sermon 24, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” §§ 1.1, Works, 1:533-34. ↑

46. Wesley, Sermon 75, “On Schism,” §§ 1:11, Works, 3:64-65. ↑

47. Virginia Todd Holeman explores the importance of a “differentiated” self from a Wesleyan Holiness perspective in “Wesleyan Holiness and Differentiation of Self: A Systems Approach,” Wesleyan Theology and Social Science, 83-93. ↑

48. For a Wesleyan perspective on the importance of community, see Sarah DeBoard Marion and Warren S. Brown, “Attachment, Spiritual Formation, and Wesleyan Communities,” in Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, Or: Pickwick Press, 2009), 198-212 and Warren S. Brown, Sarah D. Marion, and Brad D. Strawn, “Human Relationality, Spiritual Formation, and Wesleyan Communities,” Wesleyan Theology and Social Science, 95-111. ↑

49. See, for instance, John B. Cobb, Jr. Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today (Nashville, Tn.: Abingdon, 1995). ↑

50. A helpful book in this tradition is Stephen J. Pope, The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994). ↑

51. See Maddox, “John Wesley on the Bible.” ↑

52. (Sermon 39, Catholic Spirit, 1.1) ↑

53. Kevin Reimer’s work on love for disabled persons fits well with Wesley’s emphasis upon helping those in need and being transformed as a consequences of that helping. See Reimer, Living L’Arche: Stories of Compassion, Love, and Disability (Continuum, 2009). ↑

54. Wesley, Sermon 84, “The Important Question,” §§ 5, Works, 3:191. ↑

55. Wesley, Sermon 92, “On Zeal,” §§ 2.5, Works, 3:313. ↑

56. See Brad Strawn and Warren Brown, “Wesleyan Holiness through the Eyes of Cognitive Science and Psychotherapy,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23:2 (2004): 121-29. ↑

57. Wesley, Sermon 90, “An Israelite Indeed,” §§ 2.11, Works, 3:289. In light of these statements and others, many Wesleyans have constructed various virtue ethics theories to account for the formation of the loving person. See, for instance, G. Michael Leffel, “Putting on Virtue: A Motivation-based Virtue Ethics of Caring for Practical Theology,” Wesleyan Theology and Social Science, 143-158, and Craig A. Boyd, A Shared Morality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2007), ch. 7. ↑

58. Wesley, Sermon 90, “An Israelite Indeed,” §§ 1.5, Works, 3:284. ↑

59. For the relationship between holiness and psychology, see especially Holeman, “Wesleyan Holiness and Differentiation of Self,” and Mark H Mann, Perfecting Grace: Holiness, Human Being, and The Sciences, New York: T & T Clark, 2006. ↑

60. John Wesley, “The Doctrine of Original Sin,” in The Works of John Wesley, Thomas Jackson, ed. 14 volumes. London: Wesleyan Conference Office; reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, Vol. IX:292. ↑

61. Wesley, Sermon 76, On Perfection, 1, 4 ↑

62. Wesley, Sermon 130, “On Living Without God,” §§ 11, Works, 4:173. ↑

63. See, for instance, Randy L. Maddox, “A Change of Affections: The Development, Dynamics, and Dethronement of John Wesley’s ‘Heart Religion,’” in “Heart Religion” in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements, Richard Steele, ed. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 2001), 3-31. See also Randy L. Maddox, “Psychology and Wesleyan Theology: Precedents and Prospects for Renewed Engagement.” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 23:2 (2004):101-109. See also Brad D. Strawn’s article, “Restoring Moral Affections of Heart: How Does Psychotherapy Heal?” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 23:2 (2004): 140-148. ↑

64. Wesley, “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” § 4, Works, 11:46. ↑

65. Wesley, Sermon 10, “The Witness of the Spirit I,” § I.8, Works 1:274. ↑

66. Maddox, “A Change of Affections,” 16. ↑

67. Ibid., 17. ↑

68. Wesley, Sermon 130, “On Living Without God,” §§ 15, Works, 4:175. ↑

69. This includes what Brad Strawn calls the telos of psychoanalysis: "the restoration of an individual's capacity for personal relatedness and subsequently their capacity for love" (Brad D. Strawn, “Toward a Wesleyan theology of psychotherapeutic activity. In Between nature and grace: Mapping the interface of Wesleyan theology and psychology,” in Conference Papers of the 2nd Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Psychology and Wesleyan Theology ]Point Loma, CA: Wesleyan Center for Twenty-First Century Studies, 2000], 39). ↑

70. See Rebekah L. Miles, “Happiness, holiness, and the moral life in John Wesley,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 207-224. See also Sarah Heaner Lancaster, The Pursuit of Happiness: Blessing and Fulfillment in Christian Life (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2010). ↑

71. Wesley, Sermon 120, “The Unity of the Divine Being,” §10, Works, 4:64. ↑

72. Wesley, Explanatory Notes, Matthew 5:2. ↑

73. Wesley, Sermon 84, “The Most Important Question” §§3.2, 3, Works, 3:189. ↑

74. Wesley, Sermon 84, “The Important Question,” §§ 6, Works, 3:192. ↑

75. Wesley, Sermon 120, “The Unity of the Divine Being” §§17, Works, 4:67. ↑

76. Wesley, Sermon 92, “On Zeal” §§3.12, Works, 3:321. ↑

77. Wesley, “Serious Thoughts Occassioned by the Earthquake at Lisbon,” Works, 11:11. ↑

78. Wesley, “Preface” in List of Poetical Works Published by the Rev. Messrs. John and Charles Wesley. With the Prefaces Connected with Them. § 5 ↑

79. I have written several books on love, including most recently Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010) and The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice, 2010). ↑

Beginning with Power

In the attempt to make sense of how God acts, the majority of people – both trained theologians and novices – begin with God’s power. This is understandable: action requires power of some kind. Without power, not even God can act.

The majority of believers have a particular view of divine power in mind as they begin to make sense of God’s actions. They use various words to describe this power, including “sovereignty,” “omnipotence,” or “almightiness.” No matter which word is preferred, the typical view says God can control others should God decide to do so. God can be controlling.

By “control,” most seem to think God can act as a sufficient cause or unilateral determiner. In the metaphysical sense, they believe God can coerce. Divine control means that God’s actions in relation to someone or something allows for no creaturely contribution: cooperation or resistance. When God controls, God alone determines the outcome.

It is widely believed that creatures cannot control God. Being uncontrollable seems essential to God. But many theologians across the centuries have said creatures do not even influence God. God is impassible, they say. Creatures can influence other creatures and the world. But such influence varies depending on the context and the creature’s power.

A few believers think God always controls others all the time. This is view amounts to full-blown theological determinism. Those who affirm this position typically appeal to mystery or the inscrutable divine will when questions about creaturely freedom or contribution arise. Few academic theologians, however, will say God always controls or is the omnicause.^[1]

The majority of believers I encounter believe God gives creatures and creation some freedom, agency, and indeterminacy. Some think God controls everything except humans. Those who affirm this view, however, typically say God periodically “intervenes” to control humans too.^[2]

A small number of theologians say God never controls, despite having the ability to do so. Philip Clayton, for instance, says that after creating the world ex nihilo, God never controls others, “not even once.” God could be controlling, but God voluntarily chooses not to be so.^[3]

Most who say God gives freedom, agency, or existence to creatures say doing so is a wholly free choice on God’s part. They believe God voluntarily chooses not to override, withdraw, or fail to provide freedom, agency, or existence. The God who could control freely decides to give what could be freely retained.

Beginning with Love

I think there’s a better way to think about how God acts. This way begins with love. The alternative view of divine action I propose, therefore, begins with God’s loving relations to creation rather than God’s power.

Of course, just about every Christian believes God loves creatures and creation. Most wholeheartedly affirm the Johannine affirmations that “God is love,” although theologians interpret that statement variously. Most Christians affirm that God’s love is steadfast, as writers of Old Testament books repeatedly say. I’ve never met a Christian who explicitly denies that God loves (although I’ve met many whose theology implicitly denies it!).

When I say that my view begins with God’s love in relation to creation, I mean, first, that God’s love is relational. God gives and receives from creatures. Rather than being impassible, God is affected by what creatures do, because God suffers with and rejoices alongside creatures. God’s love both empowers others and empathizes with them. God engages others with giving-and-receiving love.

I also believe God’s relational love is inherently uncontrolling. “Love does not insist on its own way,” to quote the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 13:5). To put it more clearly, love never coerces, in the metaphysical sense of entirely determining others. Love is never a sufficient cause, which means God’s love does not control.

My distinct claim is that love is logically prior to power in God’s nature. In God, therefore, love comes first. Because God’s nature is first and foremost love, divine love is always and inherently uncontrolling. By “uncontrolling,” I mean that God never controls creatures, situations, or worlds. God never coerces, in the metaphysical sense of unilateral determining others.

To say love is logically paramount in God does not mean that we disregard other divine attributes. Nor should we consider the other attributes unimportant. But the way we talk about God reveals how we explicitly or implicitly prioritize God’s attributes. And this prioritization influences how we best make sense of divine action.

All of this obviously affects how I believe God acts. It also affects for what God is creatively and morally responsible as the Creator, Sustainer, and Saviour of the world.

Essential Kenosis

I call the view of divine action I’m proposing “essential kenosis.” This view of kenosis differs from others views.

Many Christians know the Philippians passage in which the Greek word kenosis is found (although we also can find it elsewhere in Scripture). The Apostle Paul says “each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” He then says Christ Jesus “emptied himself (kenosis), taking the form of a slave.” This included Jesus humbling himself and dying on a cross. We therefore ought to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:3-13).

Scholars translate kenosis in this passage in various ways. Theologians like me haggle over the nuances. Many contemporary theologians believe this passage says Jesus reveals something important about God’s nature. While theologians in the past used this passage to debate how God may have relinquished attributes when becoming incarnate, many now think Jesus’ kenosis tells us something crucial about who God is and how God acts. Kenosis is the key to understanding divine action.

The meaning of kenosis is party given in Philippian phrases such as Jesus “taking the form of a slave,” “humbled himself,” and his “death on a cross.” Kenosis refers in part to action that looks “to the interest of others” and enables “us to will and to work.” Taken in light of the revelation of God in Jesus, these phrases suggest that God’s power is essentially self-giving and vulnerable, not overpowering. Instead of controlling us, God enables us to act.^[4]

Divine kenosis might be best interpreted as God’s self-giving, others-empowering, and therefore uncontrolling love.

Essential Kenosis vs. Voluntary Self-Limitation

Many scholars today say kenosis refers to God’s “self-limitation.” In his servant-like life, liberating words, death on the cross, and more, Jesus reveals that God’s power is limited. This is another way to say God does not control.

Most who affirm a kenotic view of divine power, however, believe God’s power is voluntarily self-limited. In other words, kenosis an accidental characteristic of God not essential to God’s nature. This view implies that God could control, but (usually) does not. God could fail to self-give and others-empower, but God (usually) does not. Thomas Tracy describes this view when he speaks of God’s “intentional self-restraint.”^[5]

John Polkinghorne’s describe voluntary divine self-limitation. God’s “act of creation involves a voluntary limitation,” says Polkinghorne, “in allowing the other to be.”^[6] Voluntary kenosis entails, therefore, that “God does not will the act of a murderer or the destructive force of an earthquake but allows both to happen in a world in which divine power is deliberately self-limited to allow causal space for creatures.”^[7]

In contrast to those who say God is voluntarily kenotic, I do not think God voluntarily self-limits. I do not think kenotic self-limitation is based upon a voluntary promise God made long ago. Nor do I think God voluntarily chooses to self-limit in the present.

The voluntary self-limitation view of divine action has major flaws. It is especially unappealing when it comes to thinking about God’s role in preventing evil. Notice that Polkinghorne says God “allows” the act of the murderer and the destructive force of an earthquake. The God who freely allows evil, however, is morally culpable for failing to prevent it. Permitting genuine evil that could be stopped is not the way of love.

Essential Kenosis and Scientific Explanation

The voluntary self-limitation view of divine action has other flaws too. It fails to provide a consistent explanatory grid for understanding science, for instance. If God occasionally controls a creature or situation, any scientific explanation for that event that appeals to natural causes would, in principle, be false. In other words, supernatural interruptions undermine consistent scientific method.

A consistent explanatory framework account for both theology and science would avoid claiming either that God entirely determines events or that natural causes entirely determine them. On this issue, I’m reminded of the cartoon showing a scientist at the chalkboard writing physics equations. In midst of the equations, the phrase “then a miracle occurs” has been scribbled, obviously undermining the scientists search for consistent explanation!

According to essential kenosis, God is present throughout all creation, to every creature and entity, no matter how small or large. God is also always influential in creation. To use philosophical language, essential kenosis says God is a necessary cause in all things.

Essential kenosis says that from the big bang, in the emergence of life, through evolutionary history, and ongoing today, God creates through uncontrolling love. This direct but uncontrolling divine action both gives to creatures and receives from them. Our loving God is personal and relational but never controlling.

In terms of explanations of reality in general or any event in particular, therefore, both science and theology always contribute necessarily to a full explanation. God is a partial cause in every event, but never a sufficient one. Consequently, science always plays a role in explanations of life.

Essential Kenosis and Two Alternatives

Essential kenosis stands between two related views of God’s love and power. We’ve already noted one: it says God voluntarily self-limits. This view says God could control others entirely but (usually) chooses not to do so. Voluntary divine self-limitation fails to solve the problem of why the God who voluntarily self-limits doesn’t occasionally un-self-limit to prevent evil. And it cannot support the consistency needed for scientific explanations.

The other view standing near essential kenosis says external forces or worlds essentially limit God. This view gives the impression that outside actors and powers not of God’s making hinder divine power. Or it says God is subject to laws of nature, imposed from without.

The “external forces limit God” view unfortunately seems to describe God as a helpless victim to external realities. God seems caught in the clutches of exterior principalities and powers. While we have good reasons to think God’s power is limited in certain respects, this view places God under a foreign authority.

Essential kenosis stands between these two views. It rejects both voluntary divine self-limitation and that external powers limit God. We might call essential kenosis “involuntary divine self-limitation, because it says limits to God’s power derive from within: God’s nature of love. The Creator does not voluntarily self-limit, nor do creation or external laws rule the Maker.

Supernatural Intervention?

Since the time of David Hume, it has become common to talk about God “intervening” in the world or divine action as “supernatural.” This language is problematic, however, for several reasons.

The word “intervene” suggests that God comes into some situation from the outside. Instead of already present, God must enter into a situation typically sustained entirely by natural causes. When intervening, the absent God interjects into what was previously devoid of divine action.

While “supernatural” can mean any number of things, it is often used to talk about God interfering with creaturely causation. Or the word refers to interrupting natural laws. Rather than empowering creatures, some say God “supernaturally” controls them unilaterally to bring about some result.

The God of essential kenosis is always already present to all things at all times. This God never needs to intervene to interrupt creation. And because God is always uncontrolling, it makes no sense to say God supernaturally interferes with creation or the law-like regularities of reality.

God’s steadfast love for all creation makes life possible moment by moment. And this steadfast love generates the law-like regularities we see in the universe. Although often called “the laws of nature,” these regularities persist, says essential kenosis, because God necessarily gives existence to all creation through steadfast love. God cannot interfere with creaturely causation nor interrupt these regularities, because doing so would mean God fails to express self-giving, others-empowering love to all others.

God and Free Processes

Essential kenosis affirms a version of what has come to be called “the free process” view of God’s relation to the causal processes of the universe. The free process view notes that the complex world has numerous systems and processes dependent upon one another. Slight changes in the system create the loss of equilibrium. “Fiddling” with the systems would lead to chaotic results. Consequently, God provides law-like regularities that are not interrupted.

John Polkinghorne speaks of the regularity necessary for these processes as best “understood theologically as signs of the faithfulness of the Creator.”^[8] Essential kenosis agrees but adds that the Creator’s faithfulness derives from God’s loving nature. To apply the words of the Apostle Paul: “God remains faithful,” because God “cannot deny himself” (2 Tm 2:13).

Polkinghorne also says God “will not interfere” in the operation of the regularities described by physics. To do so, he says, “would be for the Eternally Reliable to turn himself into an occasional conjurer.”^[9] Essential kenosis agrees, but it makes the stronger claim that God cannot interfere with these regularities. God cannot do so, because God’s self-giving, others-empowering, and uncontrolling love comes first in God’s nature. And God cannot deny himself.

The processes of the world, therefore, are free and regular because of God’s love. The freedom and agency in the created order derives from divine love. And the regularities in creation are the natural results of God’s necessarily and lovingly giving existence to all things, from the smallest to the largest.

Miracles

Upon finding that essential kenosis has a noncoercive, noninterfering God who provides law-like regularities, it may surprise some to find that this view of divine action affirms miracles. We best define miracles as good and unexpected events that occur because of God’s special action in relation to creation. God can be uncontrolling and yet instigate miracles.

Biblical writers never explicitly use language that says God controlled creatures to enact miracles. In fact, most miracles stories recorded in the Bible tell of an essential role for creaturely contribution. We need not read biblical witness presupposing controlling power, because the text neither requires nor explicitly supports this presupposition.^[10]

According to essential kenosis, miracles are moments or events in which the loving activity of an almighty God dramatically affects a creature or situation. This dramatic work is possible through the various forms God provides creatures, forms pertinent to the particular context or creature. When creatures cooperate with God’s loving call by instantiating a form for goodness, surprisingly good results can occur.

In this miraculous activity, God acts personally, relationally, and lovingly, not as a steady state, impersonal, or homogenous force. But acting personally, relationally, and lovingly never entails controlling creatures or situations when instigating miracles.

Conclusion

In this essay I was only able to sketch out my view and why it matters to start with love when pondering divine action. For more, I encourage readers to see my newly published book, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence.^[11] I have tried to provide a coherent account of divine action and various other issues related to it, especially evil, law-like regularities of the world, scientific method, and miracles. As I see it, the essential kenosis view of divine action, with its emphasis up God’s self-giving, others-empowering, and therefore uncontrolling love of God offers the best overall model of divine action.

Notes

1. Paul Kjoss Helseth advocates this view (“God Causes All Things,” in Four Views on Divine Providence, ed. Dennis W. Jowers [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011], 52). ↑

2. Jack Cottrell advocates an interventionist God (“The nature of Divine Sovereignty,” in The Grace of God, The Will of Man, Clark H. Pinnock, ed. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1989], 112). ↑

3. See Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 66. ↑

4. I note biblical scholarship supporting this position in my book, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press Academic, 2015), ch. 7. ↑

5. Thomas F. Tracy, God, Action, and Embodiment (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984), 44. ↑

6. John Polkinghorne, “Chaos Theory and Divine Action,” in Religion and Science, W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 249. ↑

7. John Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation and Divine Action,” in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, John Polkinghorne, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001), 102. ↑

8. In Thomas Jay Oord, ed. The Polkinghorne Reader: Science, Faith and the Search for Meaning (London: SPCK; Philadelphia: Templeton, 2010), 124-25. ↑

9. John Polkinghorne, Science and Providence: God’s Interaction with the World (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2005), 30. ↑

10. I explore miracles and offer concrete proposals in chapter 8 of The Uncontrolling Love of God. ↑

11. Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press Academic, 2015). ↑

In 1974, the National Science Foundation awarded Ellen Berscheid and a colleague an $84,000 research grant to answer better the question, “What is love?” Berscheid had convinced the foundation to award the money in part by arguing, “We already understand the mating habits of the stickleback fish. It is time to turn to a new species.” The species she had in mind was human.

Berscheid’s research results may have gone unnoticed if not for the response of Wisconsin Senator, William Proxmire. “I’m strongly against this,” exclaimed Proxmire, “not only because no one - not even the National Science Foundation - can argue that falling in love is a science; not only because I am sure that even if they spend 84 million or 84 billion they wouldn’t get an answer that anyone would believe. I’m also against it because I don’t want to know the answer!”

Proxmire presented Berscheid with the first of his “Golden Fleece” awards. Proxmire bestowed the award to this project, because he considered the study of love a supreme example of wasteful government spending. His advice to those who funded the grant was simple: “National Science Foundation, get out of the love racket!”

The love racket? It is difficult to think of a better use of money than the study of how well-being might be promoted. Is there any study potentially more worthwhile than the study of love?

A few came to Berscheid’s defense in 1974, including New York Times writer James Reston. He replied that funding grants to study love “would be the best investment of federal money since Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.” Apparently Reston’s retort fell on deaf ears, however, because financial resources for the study of love remained meager. Few scholars would assume the label “love researcher” for decades after the incident.

The idea that scientists ought to study love found perhaps its strongest 20^th century voice in Pitirim A. Sorokin, the man many consider the father of modern sociology. Sorokin initially came to his convictions about the importance of love studies when jailed as a Russian political prisoner in the century’s early decades.

After escaping prison, Sorokin immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. He taught as sociologist at the University of Minnesota, and he eventually accepted a professorship at Harvard University. In 1949, Sorokin founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism with the financial help of Eli Lilly and the Lilly Endowment.

Sorokin’s major publishing contribution to love research was The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. In the volume’s preface he defends the importance of studying love:

At the present juncture of human history an increase in our knowledge of the grace of love has become the paramount need of humanity, and an intensive research in this field should take precedence over almost all other studies and research. . . . Considering the immensity of this task, [my] contribution is very modest in comparison with the total sum of the necessary studies. Since, however, the better brains are busy with other problems, including the invention of means of extermination of human beings . . . [and] many a religious leader is absorbed in the intertribal crusades against various enemies – under these conditions somebody, somehow, must devote himself to a study of the miracle of love ([1954] 2002, xii).

Throughout the book, Sorokin offers insights into the power of love, suggestions about how love research might be done, and uncannily accurate predictions about what would occur should society neglect the study of love.

Unfortunately, Sorokin’s research on love faded by the end of the 1950s as he retired from teaching and his research center ran out of funding. Although his own contribution to the study of love was exemplary, he inspired no immediate followers to carry his research mantle.^[1] Organized research on love from a perspective that integrated science, religion, and philosophy all but vanished for almost five decades.

At the turn of the 21^st century, organized research on love reemerged. With funding from the John E. Fetzer Institute and the John Templeton Foundation, biologists, ethicists, sociologists, theologians, psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, and medical care-givers conferred at an MIT conference titled, “Empathy, Altruism, and Agape.” Of course, a few scholars of various sorts had been researching and writing about love independently for decades prior to this conference. But for the first time scholars from widely diverse disciplines deliberated together on issues and challenges that arise when studying love.

One among many outcomes of the conference was the 2001 establishment of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, was named the institute’s president, and the John Templeton Foundation provided multi-million dollar funding.

President Post set several goals for the fledgling institute. He pledged 1) to fund high-level scientific research on altruism and unlimited love, 2) to sustain a dialogue between science and religion on love’s meaning and significance, 3) to disseminate true stories of love as it manifests in the helping behaviors of those whose lives are devoted to serving others, and 4) to enhance the practical manifestations of love across the full spectrum of human experience (Post 2003, vii).

The label “Unlimited Love” in the title of Post’s organization has become a source of curiosity for many. Post uses the phrase to refer to three related ideas. First and foremost, unlimited love refers to the promotion of well-being for all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner. “The ultimate expression of love is love for all humanity,” says Post, “and for all that is” (16).” Love should be expressed to those who are near and dear and to those who are enemies, as well as to the cognitively and physically impaired. Nothing exists beyond the limits of this love. Unlimited love refers, secondly, to a hidden reality or energy that underlies all that is good in the universe. Post sometimes calls this energy the “ultimate environment” (72). This environment provides integration, meaning, and purpose to life. Finally, unlimited love refers to divine benevolence. “Unlimited Love is God’s love for us all,” says Post. It is “the ultimate reality that underlies all that is, and which can transform our limited and broken lives into journeys of remarkable generous service” (11).

Research supported by the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, the Fetzer Institute, and various smaller programs has generated remarkable scholarship in recent years as scholars of religion and science explore love. I call this emergent field of scholarship the love-and-science symbiosis (Oord 2004b). Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines – whether natural, social, or religious – must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love.

The love research program involves the core belief that the world can, all things considered, be made better in some ways. In short, we ought to be about the work of promoting well-being. Individuals that express these loving actions consistently develop the kind of virtues that characterize what we call saints, sages, or mentors. We should imitate these individuals. Communities and societies that in varying ways support this love should be supported and replicated. In many and diverse ways, we must study how we might express love.

Defining Love

Virtually all people act – and often talk – as if they have some inkling about love. We speak about loving food, falling in love, loving God, feeling loved, and loving a type of music. We say that love hurts, love waits, love stinks, and love means never having to say you’re sorry. We use the word and its derivatives in a wide variety of ways. The fact that people talk of love in such varied ways prompted Sigmund Freud to note that “‘love’ is employed in language” in an “undifferentiated way” (1994, 49). Theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop concurs, saying that love is an ambiguous, multifarious “weasel-word” (1972, 9).

Although we talk about love often, few of us spell out what we really mean by the word. It may be that resources for love research have been scanty and researchers have generally been reluctant to pursue love studies in part because so few of us have given time and energy to provide an adequate definition of love. Why focus one’s scholarship upon or financially support something vague, bewildering, and unspecified?

Sometimes in reflective moments we wonder what love actually is. Is love a decision or a feeling? Is love blind or universally aware? Is it sexual, nonsexual, or asexual? Is love self-sacrificial or self-authenticating? Is it unconditional or object-specific? Is love best understood as apape, eros, philia, something else, or all of these and more? Is love something only God expresses, or are creatures capable of loving? In the final analysis, can we comprehend anything about love?

Judging by the literature, even scholars find defining love difficult. “Even those who write best about love,” noted Jules Toner, “devote very little space to considering what love is” (1968, 8). The dearth of definitions prompts theologian Edward Vacek to observe that “most philosophical and theological writing, when it speaks of ‘love,’ does not analyze what love is, but rather assumes it has an evident meaning” (1994, 34). Irving Singer argues that “the analysis of love has been neglected more than almost any other subject in philosophy” (1987, xi).

Many who consider love abandon any attempt to provide a normative definition. They rest content instead in simply trying to figure out what “love” means given the context, or language game, in which it is used. But this practice leaves central assumptions about the nature of love unacknowledged, which in turn leads to incoherence and further ambiguity. Confusion reigns.

At present, a small but growing number of scholars are offering hypotheses pertaining to love as it relates to their particular field of inquiry. For instance, neuroscientists suggest that specific brain regions must function if creatures are able to express love. Biologists explore the social interaction of species and suggest hypotheses about the altruistic or egoistic motivations and/or impetuses behind such interaction. Religious scholars in the theistic traditions suggest hypotheses and creeds about divine action as these pertain to love. And a few philosophers classify various types of love according to their motivations and/or objects.

If scholars and researchers fail to define love clearly, however, the present surge in the study of love will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might. When we are not clear about what love is, it becomes difficult to judge the value or contribution of any particular investigation of love. And if widely divergent definitions of love are employed, it is difficult to compare the theories and research of one discipline with another.

In light of this, I want to provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing research in the love-and-science symbiosis. My own definition of love is this:

To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being.

To say the same thing differently, loving actions are influenced by the previous actions of others, oneself, and God, and these actions are executed in the hope of encouraging flourishing.^[2] To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases.

to act intentionally

The word “intentionally” refers to three aspects of love: deliberateness, motive, and self-determination. With regard to deliberateness, I mean that love involves a decisional aspect. This decisional aspect need not entail long and drawn out contemplation; we often express love based upon split-second decisions. But a degree of mentality accompanies action that we should regard as loving. The decisional aspect also does not mean that those who endeavor to love repeatedly step back to survey the wide range of possible alternatives available before deciding what the best action is to take. While lovers occasionally reflect on a wide array of options, they most often decide between only a few options of which they are aware. And one or more of those options may seem much more compelling than others.

This decisional aspect in my definition of love opposes the idea that a person loves when, by coincidence, a positive outcome results from that person’s actions. It opposes the idea that actions done without any judgment whatsoever, even when those actions result in good, should be regarded as loving. Of course, the good that results from unconscious or inadvertent activity is still valuable, but I reserve the label “loving action” for deeds purposefully done to promote well-being.

With regard to the motive aspect of acting intentionally, I mean that we should not say that a person has acted lovingly when a positive outcome results from actions that the actor meant for harm.^[3] Motives matter, even though actions done with good motives can sometimes produce ill-being and actions done with evil motives can inadvertently produce well-being. In emphasizing the importance of motives, I am rejecting consequentialist ethical theories that judge actions as good or evil solely by their consequences. Love as I understand it assesses prospectively what actions promise to do rather than retrospectively what actions have actually yielded the greatest good.

Admittedly, being certain other’s motives may be impossible, and discerning one’s own true motives can sometimes be difficult. Only the ideal observer who knows all that can be known can accurately adjudicate motives. While more should be said about such an Observer, the weight of scientific research on love does not depend on our flawless discernment of motives. I am simply claiming that love requires good motives so as to remind us of what probably seems obvious: actions done with wrong motives should not be considered acts of love.

Third, I use the phrase “to act intentionally” to account for the self-determination inherent in love. To say it another way, love is meaningless if individuals are not free to choose one action rather than others. To be free is to make choices that are not entirely dependent upon external conditions that make it the case that one cannot do otherwise. Coercion, in the sense of unilateral determination, is antithetical to love.

Freedom does not, however, involve total spontaneity and completely random choice. Rather, concrete circumstances limit what is genuinely possible as options for action. Theologian Daniel Day Williams put it well when he says that “freedom is never absent from love, neither is it ever unconditional freedom” (1968, 116).^[4] Freedom to love includes being impelled to choose between a limited number of possibilities that pertain to the chooser’s immediate context. I call this limited freedom.

To call love an action is not to claim that love is always an imposition or intervention into the affairs of others. Sometimes love entails acting in ways that do not greatly influence others. Nor is calling love an action a claim that acts of love are always demonstrable deeds perceptible to our five sense. Thinking and praying, for instance, can be acts of love. I use the word “act” to cover a broad range of activities, both seen and unseen.

In our brief exploration of science, we noted that many factors influence one’s perception of and reflection upon objects in the world. These factors affect but do not entirely determine intentional actions. For instance, one’s bodily characteristics, emotions, neural substrates, hormonal constitution, genetic framework, and other factors influence greatly but do not entirely control one’s intentional actions. Environmental dynamics beyond the lover’s own body, such as political, communal, and ecological relationships, also greatly shape intentional activity. The vast majority of recent scientific research strengthens the claim that the forms of love possible for any particular individual are partly dependent upon physical and emotional factors both within and beyond a lover’s body.

in sympathetic response to others (including God)

Love requires actual relations with others. Entirely isolated individuals – if such existed – could not love. To say that love involves sympathetic response is to presuppose that individuals are mutually influencing. It is to assume that others – whether those others are people, nonhumans, one’s own past actions, or God – have influenced the one who loves.

I use the word “sympathy” in my definition of love as a technical word to refer to the internal, constituting influence of one or more objects or individuals upon the loving actor. Many 20^th century philosophers use the word in this way. Charles Hartshorne, for instance, explains what sympathy entails by saying that “the doctrine of sympathy ...is that all feeling feels other feeling, all reaction has an object which itself is reactive, [and] that we have objects at all is due entirely to the . . . immanent sociality of experience” (1937, 185). Alfred North Whitehead refers to sympathy as “prehension” and other philosophers, such as George Herbert Mead and Herbert Spencer, have called it “fellow feeling.” Because of this sympathy, or what Hartshorne calls “the social nature of reality,” to be decided in part by others is essential to what it means to be (1951, 527).

I should note that in some disciplines, what I have described as sympathy – feeling with – is instead called “empathy.” In these disciplines, sympathy carries overtones of pity and condescension rather than feeling the feelings of others. For instance, sociologists Pearl and Samuel Oliner suggest that sympathy “means pity or commiseration for another’s condition.” It implies looking at another person “at a distance.” According to the Oliners, “empathy means feeling with the other person” (1995, 32). By contrast and in congruence with my use of sympathy, social psychologist L. G. Wispe suggests that “sympathy refers to the heightened awareness of the suffering of another person,” while “empathy, on the other hand, refers to the attempt by one self-aware self to comprehend unjudgementally the positive and negative experiences of another self.” In sum, says Wispe, “In empathy we substitute ourselves for others. In sympathy, we substitute others for ourselves” (1986, 318).

My use of sympathy is not meant to be equated with looking at the other from afar in this way. Rather, to sympathize is to be internally influenced by the other such that one’s own experience is partially constituted by the one perceived. One’s sympathetic response to others entails reaction to what has occurred in both the immediate and distant past. The one who loves is internally related to what has happened in the past, as past actions influence that individual’s moment-by-moment identity as a lover. The actions of those in the present will influence those who arise in the future. The interdependence of sympathy – in this sense of the word – is essential to what it means to love.^[5]

Just as one’s intentional actions are influenced by many factors, many factors also influence the nature of one’s sympathetic response. Our sympathies to our environment are partly dependent upon the make-up of our brains, bodies, and causes beyond ourselves. Just as bodily and environmental greatly shape our intentions, these same factors also greatly shape our sympathetic responses. This shaping is discussed frequently in contemporary discussions emotions, biological constraints, and affect.

An important feature of the phrase “in sympathetic response to others (including God)” is the parenthetical acknowledgement of divine influence. An explanation of the causal role that God plays requires more space than this essay allows. At this point, I simply note that I consider God an actual, causal agent to whose non-coercive inspiration – or “call” – creatures respond appropriately when expressing love (Stone & Oord, ch. 9).

The phrases of my love definition we have explored thus far – “to act intentionally” and “in sympathetic response” – reflect the two dominant ways philosophers, theologians, scientists, and poets throughout history have thought about the nature of love. Robert Hazo, in his classic study, The Idea of Love, refers to these two ways “tendency” and “judgment.”

Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as tendency identify love with feeling or emotion. They use words like “instinct” and “impulse” when referring to love. Lovers might say that they “fell in love,” that they feel as though they have been “overwhelmed by love,” or that some object or person is “just so lovable.” Neurologist Antonio Damasio argues eloquently for this understanding of love today, and he follows a line of argumentation that philosopher Baruch Spinoza proposed centuries ago (2003).

Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as judgment typically use the words “will,” “choice,” or “cognition” when talking about love. Love is a decision, they say, and we must choose to love no matter what emotions we feel. Reflecting the idea that love is a matter of the will, psychologists Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth, and Paul Meier title their best-selling book, Love is a Choice. They argue that one must choose to break free from addictive or unhealthy co-dependent relationships if they are to love as they ought (1996).

After examining a wide variety of philosophical, theological, and scientific literature, Robert Hazo concludes that “the division between the sphere or order of tendency and the sphere or order of judgment is the most basic in the literature.” In fact, he argues, “All of the critical notions and terms we use in dealing with theories of love fall under one or the other of these two headings” (1967, 11).

My own definition of love is apparently unlike the love theories and definitions with which Hazo deals. I define love as necessarily involving both spheres: tendential and judgmental or, as I put it, sympathetic and intentional. Love has both a passive and an active element.

As I see it, sympathetic feeling logically precedes decisional intentionality. But both sympathy and intentionality are present in a single responsive act of love. Martha Nussbaum gets at this when she argues that emotions are essential elements of human intelligence and choice when humans love (2001). I argue that an act of love logically begins with an individual’s feeling of or being influenced by past actualities and the relevant possibilities arising from that past. The love-act is consummated, however, by the lover’s decision about exactly how that past will be appropriated in light of expected contribution to the future.^[6] My definition is consonant with Stephen Post’s proposal: “An even balance or co-primacy between emotion and reason is the fitting alternative to those who would diminish the importance of either capacity” (2003, 67). In sum, an act of love requires both sympathy and intentionality.

to promote well-being

The emphasis upon promoting well-being requires an explanation of what well-being entails. The phrase itself is related to health, happiness, wholeness, and flourishing. Aristotle called it eudaimonia. Theistic traditions have sometimes used the word “blessedness” when speaking of well-being. Moral philosopher James Griffin succinctly defines well-being as “the level to which basic needs are met” (1986, 42).

Promoting well-being involves enhancing mental and physical aspects. It may involve acting to attain sufficient food, clean air and water, adequate clothing and living conditions, personal security, opportunity for intellectual development, the satisfaction of being cared for and sense of belonging, diversity of life-forms and cultural expressions, appropriate level of leisure and entertainment, economic stability, a feeling of worth, medical soundness and physical fitness, deep personal relationships, social and political harmony, and the opportunity to develop spiritual/religious sensibilities and practices. Acting responsively to increase well-being may involve acting in ways that develop the actor into a person with virtuous dispositions, habits, and character.

To act for well-being is act to increase flourishing in at least one but often many of these dimensions of existence. Love takes into account, to varying degrees, the life of the individual, local community, and global community. And so as far as they apply, acting to promote well-being includes considering the flourishing of nonhuman organisms and ecological systems. It even includes increasing God’s own happiness. In all of this, an act of love maximizes well-being.

Part of the reason that defining love can be so difficult is that at least three divergent linguistic traditions influence our love vocabulary. I call these 1) the proper/improper tradition, 2) the mutuality tradition, and 3) the hesed (or chesed) tradition.

What I call the “proper/improper love” linguistic tradition, identified initially with the ancient Greeks, has primarily affected the way that Westerners use the word “love.” We see its influence in the earliest Western philosophers, the Christian New Testament, the Qu’ran, and in common language use. What is distinctive about the proper/improper linguistic tradition is that in it the word “love” describes any purposive action whatsoever. Philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, who was greatly influenced by Aristotle’s work, expresses the proper/improper tradition’s understanding of love well when he argues that “every agent, whatever it be, does every action from love of some kind” (1981, Part I-II, Q. 28, Art. 6). We see it in Augustine’s famous directive: “Love, but see to it what you love” (1961, 90:31:5). In short, merely to act intentionally, according to this linguistic tradition, is to love.

When someone from the proper/improper tradition speaks of love, a qualifier of some sort is typically employed. An adjective such as “proper” and “improper,” “perfect” and “imperfect,” “appropriate” and “inappropriate,” and “fitting” and “unfitting” precedes the word “love.” Saints love properly; sinners love improperly. “Love” requires a qualifier if laden with moral connotations, because by itself love can refer to action that is either good or evil.

We often find the second linguistic tradition, the mutuality one, in the philosophies of the East, and it is more evident in the West’s amorous literature. According to the mutuality tradition, to love is to engage in personal interaction. The reciprocity and mutuality inherent in such relationships is itself love. For instance, contemporary theologian Vincent Brummer calls love “a reciprocal relation,” and he claims that love “must by its very nature be a relationship of free mutual give and take” (1993, 161-62). Wherever we see reciprocal relationships, says the mutuality tradition, love is present. To be related is to love.

I find unhelpful the way “love” is used in both the mutuality and the proper/improper linguistic traditions. While the mutuality tradition rightly emphasizes the importance of relationships, few of us – myself included – would describe all relationships as loving. Some relationships generate evil. While the proper/improper tradition rightly emphasizes the idea that love is an action, it strikes most people – myself included – as odd to talk of “improper love,” “inappropriate love,” “inauthentic love,” or even, as would be justified in the proper/improper tradition, “evil love.” While we can makes some sense out of what a speaker means when using “love” in these ways, these uses tend to confuse.

The phrase in my love definition “to promote well-being” places my understanding of how we best use the word “love” in the third linguistic tradition, what I call the hesed tradition. The word hesed derives from Judaism, and we find it often translated in Hebrew scriptures as “steadfast love.” In this linguistic tradition, the word “love” is reserved for descriptions of ideal ethical actions or what the Hebrew authors called “righteousness.” Such loving actions promote well-being. When I use the word “love,” therefore, I follow the practice of the hesed tradition and mean action that engenders well-being.

To speak of well-being is to implicate many versions of meta-ethics and moral theory. As is appropriate, ethicists, theologians, and moral philosophers debate the value of a variety of ethical theories when deciding how to best understand morality and the pursuit of well-being. I mean for my definition of love to fit comfortably within most of the dominant meta-ethical frameworks. Advocates of these differing theories may find my definition helpful even as they employ it in differing ways. For instance, advocates of feminist ethics will undoubtedly appreciate the central role of relational sympathy/empathy in my definition of love. Advocates of divine command ethics may find my reference to divine action helpful as they consider love as response to God’s will.^[7] Those who propose various ethics of care theories should find helpful my emphasis upon relationality and response for love. Advocates of meta-ethical theories such as natural law ethics, virtue ethics, and Kantianism, among others, may find this definition helpful in various ways for their own deliberations.

To be both adequate to a wide range of specific activities that should rightly be regarded as loving and also fruitful for a wide variety of meta-ethical theories, an acceptable definition of love must be sufficiently abstract. To say it another way, a definition that seeks to be relevant to a comprehensive set of actions and theories requires abstractness. A helpful abstraction should not be so general as to allow for any action or theory. But it must be able to account for those actions that after careful reflection, we justifiably deem loving while excluding those actions that we justifiably deem unloving.

Defining Agape

The fifteenth-century French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucould wisely said, “There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.” Today we might say that love has millions, billions, or even trillions of versions. Love is pluralistic in the sense that many actions, depending on their motives and circumstances, can be acts of love. In thinking about how best to understand love in light of the recent interest in scientific research on the subject, it seems wise to consider love’s “versions.” It has become increasingly common to place the versions of love under three general forms: agape, eros, and philia.^[8] I want to look closely at one of these versions: agape.

By far, agape is the form of love to which the love-and-science symbiosis literature most commonly refers. Philip Hefner, for instance, argues that “the theological elaboration of agape should not shy away from identifying it with altruism,” which means in part that “the most pressing question that arises in conversation with the sciences is . . . Can we entertain the hypothesis that altruistic love is rooted in the fundamental nature of reality, including the reality we call nature?” (1993, 208-09) Stephen Post also often employs the word agape as he oversees scientific and religions investigations sponsored by the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love.

Those who use the word agape believe it entails meanings and connotations beyond what the simple word “love” entails. Many apparently adopt agape as a way to distinguish their theories of love from romantic or popular understandings. Some adopt agape because it entails for them special reference to divine action. And scholars frequently use agape to distinguish some actions from others that might also promote well-being.

Widespread contemporary use of agape should be credited to the influential writings of theologian Anders Nygren, although the word itself dates to antiquity. Nygren’s mid-twentieth-century book, Agape and Eros, set off wide-ranging debate in its time. That debate placed the word at the center of attention in love scholarship. Nygren “so effectively posed issues about love,” ethicist Gene Outka claimed more than thirty years ago, “that they have had a prominence in theology and ethics they never had before. . . . Thus, whatever the reader may think of it, one may justifiably regard his work as the beginning of the modern treatment of the subject” (1972, 1). More recently, Edward Collins Vacek acknowledges that Nygren’s “insights are splendid, his mistakes are instructive, and his views are still very much alive” (1994, 159). Colin Grant, a contemporary advocate of Nygren’s general agape scheme, calls Nygren’s altruistic agape “indispensable,” saying that he “deserves to be heard clearly in his insistence on the distinctively theological significance of agape” (1996, 21).

Two features of Nygren’s understanding of agape greatly influence both the scholarly and popular notion of agape love. The first feature is his complex theological and philosophical understandings of agape. According to him, agape is rightly understood as

• unconditioned, spontaneous, groundless, or unmotivated
• indifferent to, but creative of, value
• directed toward sinners
• the sole initiator of creaturely fellowship with God
• in opposition to all that can be called self-love
• sacrificial giving to others
• and expressed only by God (1957 [1930], 27-240).

Despite the widespread influence of Nygren’s agape assertions, critics have rejected, for one reason or another, every one of his major claims. For instance, some reject his argument that agape is opposed to all that can be called self-love. Others reject Nygren’s understanding of agape because if genuine love only entails sacrificial giving, Christians cannot act lovingly when receiving gifts from others. Others note that his understanding of agape as exclusively divine love implies some form of predestination. Nygren’s emphasis upon agape as the only appropriate Christian love, say many critics, neglects legitimate Christian philia and Christian eros.

Those familiar with the agape debate are typically aware of these and similar criticisms. They are typically less familiar with the criticisms of the second feature of Nygren’s concept of agape that influences love scholarship. That feature is Nygren’s claim that agape is the distinctively Christian understanding of love, because, as he believes, the Bible proposes a relatively unique and uniform understanding of agape.

An examination of Christian scripture reveals that, contrary to Nygren’s argument, biblical authors use the word agape to convey a wide variety and sometimes contradictory set of meanings. For instance, biblical writers sometimes use agape to refer to ideal ethical action, and other times biblical authors use agape to refer to sinful action.^[9] Sometimes biblical authors use agape to talk about unconditional love and other times about conditioned, response-dependent love.^[10] We find biblical authors using agape to talk about non-self-sacrificial love. Even the Apostle Paul – whom Nygren believes most supports his own agape theories – employs agape to talk about self-love.^[11]

Because the context suggests it, biblical scholars translate agape in ways that we typically think the word eros or philia would be translated. For instance, agape is translated in ways that connote eros; it is rendered “to long for,” “to prefer,” “to desire,” “to prize,” “to value,” and “to be fond of.”^[12] Sometimes agape is used to convey meanings traditionally assigned philia and, in many contexts, the two words seem interchangeable.^[13] In sum, the Bible is far from uniform in its understanding of agape. Neither the narrow claim that agape possesses a single meaning in the Bible nor the broader claim that one meaning of agape predominates in Christian Scripture find textual support. To be true to Christian Scripture, we should not talk about the biblical understanding of agape.

Despite the objections that Nygren’s critics raise and despite the diverse meanings of agape in Christian Scripture, many contemporary scholars – excluding biblical researchers -- consider this love word to have privileged status or unique meaning. Those aligned with the Christian tradition are especially prone to afford agape such high honor. The meanings that scholars afford agape, however, vary greatly. Here are examples of this great variety:

Agape is . . .

to act “for the sake of the beloved” (Vacek 1993, 157).^[14]

“equal regard” or “the attribution to everyone alike of an irreducible worth and dignity” (Outka 1972, 9 & 260).

self-sacrifice (Niebuhr 1964, 82).

“God giving himself” or “divine bestowal” (Singer 1987, 269).

“the principle of benevolence, that is, of doing good” (Frankena 1988, 44).

“the overriding, unconditional claim of God’s utterly gracious yet utterly demanding rule of righteous love” (Robinson 1964, 12).

“x loves y independently of y’s merit, and any merit of y’s that plays a role in x’s love is value that x attributes to or creates in y as a result of x’s love” (Soble 1989, xxiv).

“understanding, redeeming good will for all men” (King 1986, 19).

“simple yet profound recognition of the worthiness of and goodness in persons” (Brady 2003, 268).

“self-giving” or “a person’s spending himself freely and carelessly for the other person” (Fiddes 1988, 170).

“unconditional willing of the good” (Jackson 1999, 15).^[15]

“identification with the neighbor and meeting his needs” (Williams 1968, 262).

“self-less altruism” (Martin 1996, 14).

“letting-be” (Macquarrie 1977, 349).

“ordinary human affection and compassion” (Cupitt 1988, 57).

“[a representation of] the divine extravagance of giving that does not take the self into account” (Grant 2001, 188).

The foregoing illustrates well Gene Outka’s observation that “the meaning ascribed in the literature to love, in general, and to agape, in particular, is often characterized by both variance and ambiguity” (1972, 257-58). Robert Adams notes the diverse understandings of agape that have been offered, and concludes that “agape is a blank canvas on which one can paint whatever ideal of Christian love one favors” (1999, 136). I suggest that the reasons for this variance and ambiguity have a great deal to do with the theological, ethical, anthropological, scientific, and metaphysical commitments of those who use agape to identify something unique about one form of love compared with others.

So is the word agape redeemable? Should we toss agape in the garbage pile of over-used and ambiguous words?

Given that Scripture offers no uniform meaning of agape and scholars of love offer divergent definitions, one might be tempted to pass over the word altogether in an attempt to step beyond the variance and discord. This is the same temptation, however, to which many have fallen when deciding to avoid using the even more general word, “love.” Yet love remains a uniquely powerful word. Despite the divergent meanings of agape that have been identified, the word agape carries similiarly significant rhetorical weight. It seems unwise to toss aside the great “cash value” that the word has accumulated upon finding that it has been defined variously.

Those who employ the word agape – and I count myself among them – seem obligated, however, to be careful about their use of the word. They should (1) define clearly what they mean by agape and then employ that meaning consistently, (2) show how this meaning differs from the meanings of other love forms (e.g., philia, eros) and, perhaps most importantly, (3) show how their definition of agape fits with and does not contradict their definition of love in general.

I find that all the definitions of agape I listed above have merit, but, for one reason or another, few are finally adequate. Many are not adequate because they add to the confusion by failing to meet the three obligations I have suggested.

Some definitions of agape are less adequate, because they make it difficult for us to see how these definitions allow for other versions of love to really be loves. For instance, some equate agape with doing what is good or promoting the good. I also believe that agape should be understood as promoting good. But when agape is equated with acting for the good, this implies that the other forms of love (philia, eros, etc.) are not actions that promote good. In which case, these other words aren’t forms of love – at least not love as I have defined it and as it is usually understood.^[16]

Some definitions of agape are less adequate, because they equate this love form with self-sacrifice or altruism. In fact, this is the most common use of agape in the love-and-science research. There are a host of problems with this equivalence, however. First, if two persons tried always to act self-sacrificially toward one another, neither could act self-sacrificially. “In a completely self-sacrificing community,” argues Edward Vacek, “we would want to give to and not receive from persons who would want to give to and nor receive from us” (1993, 186). Neil Cooper illustrates this problem by imagining two altruists in the desert who find a cup of water. The two pass the cup back and forth, each insisting that the other drink first, until the water evaporates and both die of thirst (1981, 274). Love sometimes eschews altruism. Just as we want others to satisfy themselves by receiving our gifts, so we ought also to receive gifts given to us. If the satisfaction that comes from such give-and-take relations is thwarted because all parties insisting on acting altruistically, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s retort seems appropriate: “too much altruism is a bore” (1953, 96).

Second, equating agape with self-sacrifice or altruism denies what seems obvious: sometimes we must not sacrifice ourselves so that in the long run we can provide more benefits to others. Love sometimes requires self-realization – a form of self affirmation. In addition, feminists in many disciplines have brought to our awareness the fact that love sometimes demands that the individual eschew self-sacrifice and instead act in self-authenticating ways – for the good of the individual and the whole.^[17] Becoming a doormat on whom others can walk, for instance, is an enabling act that fails to promote well-being.

Third, the idea that a loving person always engages in self-sacrifice may actually keep those at the margins or bottom of society from experiencing justice. If the poor and oppressed were always to act self-sacrificially, they would likely remain in their impoverished and unjust state of existence. To think that all people, even the poorest of the poor, ought always to be acting self-sacrificially is to fall victim to what Arthur McGill calls “the illusion of perpetual affluence” (1987, 89). If agape is a form of love, it must be an action that promotes rather than prevents the attainment of well-being. While I believe that self-sacrificial, self-subordinating, or altruistic action can be and often are expressions of love, these actions can also be actions that generate overall ill-being. Agape, if it is to be understood as a form of love, does not generate overall ill-being.

Still others place a great deal of emphasis upon agape as having some unique identification with God, and this emphasis typically results in a less than adequate definition of agape. Some argue that only God can express agape. Others contend that agape is the recognition that God gives love to the world. The first argument places into jeopardy the biblical claim that God wants us to love God, others, and ourselves. How can we love with agape if only God can express this type of love? The second argument – that agape should be defined as God’s bestowal of love upon creatures – suggests that the other forms of love (philia, eros, etc.) are not the loves God gives or expresses. According to the Christian Scriptures, however, God both inspires creatures to love with philia and eros, and God expresses these forms of love for creation.

While many of the agape definitions I have listed fail to meet the three obligations that I suggest as necessary for an adequate definition, I intend for my own definition of agape to meet my own demands. Before looking at my own definition, however, I should note that I do not claim that my definition of agape is the only one that could possibly be adequate. Other definitions could meet the three obligations I suggested earlier. I should also note that although I believe my definition fits well with some ways biblical authors employ the word agape and that my definition reflects important themes in Christian ethics, I do not claim that my definition is the biblical or the Christian understanding of agape.

Having made these qualifications, I offer my definition. I define agape as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being when responding to acts or structures of existence that promote ill-being. Or, to put it more concisely,

agape is intentional response to promote well-being when confronted by that which generates ill-being.

As I define it, agape repays evil with good, to use a phrase from Christian scripture. When we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, we express agape. In an effort to promote well-being, agape turns the other cheek. Agape acts to promote well-being in spite of the ill-being or evil (whether directed toward the lover or the larger society) that it confronts.

Acts that rightfully bear the label agape can range from those we deem exceptional to those we consider mundane. Many who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Nazi Holocaust expressed agape. They acted intentionally in response to others to promote well-being when confronted with the ill-being generated by Nazi ideals, structures, and activity. A mother who puts a band-aid on her child’s paper-cut also responds intentionally to promote well-being when confronted by her offspring’s unnecessary pain. The teacher who refuses to retaliate when a student unjustly accuses her is also likely expressing agape.

As soon as we offer concrete examples, of course, we wonder about the intentions of the ones deemed loving. These questions are legitimate, because, as I pointed out when explaining what I meant by love, motives matter. Instead of responding intentionally to promote well-being, perhaps the rescuers of Jews were motivated more by reputational gain or wished to avoid divine wrath. Perhaps the mother responding with aid merely wants her child healthy so that her genetic lineage will continue. Perhaps the teacher refuses to retaliate because she relishes being the abused authority figure. While these are all possible motives, we typically judge on a case-by-case basis, given the information we have, what a person’s motives might be. Unless one is prepared to accept the claim that no one acts to promote well-being when confronted by ill-being, it seems quite plausible that at least some if not most rescuers, mothers, and teachers in the situations noted above expressed agape. Those acting in these ways probably have a good idea what their motives are, and we onlookers can come to plausible judgments given a reasonable amount of observational data.

Finally, I believe that my definition fulfills the obligations necessary for an adequate notion of agape. First, I offer what I hope is a reasonably clear definition of agape. There are surely additional questions to resolve (e.g., What motivates one to express agape, or is it unmotivated? What role, if any, does God play in expressing or inspiring agape? What kind of person expresses agape?). But that agape promotes well-being in response to that which generates ill-being should be a reasonably clear definition of what I believe is the best understanding of agape.

Second, it would become clearer in an examination of philia and eros if space allowed it, what makes agape unique is its response to ill-being. The other forms of love are not responses to ill-being; they are intentional responses to something else. I would define eros, for instance, as intentional response to promote well-being when affirming what is valuable. And philia might best be defined as intentional response to promote well-being when acting to establish deeper levels of cooperation. Unfortunately, love-and-science researchers have not often employed these other love words in their explorations.

In meeting the third obligation, agape is a form of love. Agape is one way in which we might respond intentionally to others (including God) to promote overall well-being. Agape is a form of love, not love itself. Eros and philia, as I would define them, are other ways in which we might respond intentionally to promote well-being.

Conclusion

I believe that my definition of love – to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being – can provide the practical benefit and intellectual satisfaction needed of a definition helpful for the love-and-science research program. And defining agape as intentional response that promotes well-being when confronted by that which generates can be helpful for those who affirm that agape is a particular form of love. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions and we can express love powerfully without having a well-conceived definitions of love, my hope is that these definitions be useful in furthering research programs in the love-and-science symbiosis.

References

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________. 2003. The Priority of Love: Christian Charity and Social Justice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Johnson, Barry. 1995. Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography. Lawrence, Ks.: University of Press of Kansas.

King, Martin Luther Jr. 1986. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. James Washington. San Francisco: HarperCollins.

Macquarrie, John. 1977. Principles of Christian Theology. 2^nd ed. New York: Scribner’s.

Martin, Mike W. 1996. Love’s Virtues. Lawrence, Ks.: University Press of Kansas.

McGill, Arthur C. 1987. Death and Life: An American Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Moffatt, James. 1929. Love in the New Testament. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

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Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Nygren, Anders. [1930] 1957. Agape and Eros. tr. Philip S. Watson. New York: Harper and Row.

Oliner, Pearl M. 1995 Toward a Caring Society: Ideas in Action. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

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________. 2004b. Love and Science: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

________. 2003. “Divine Love.” In Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays. Thomas Jay

Oord, ed. Kansas City: Beacon Hill.

Outka, Gene. 1972. Agape: An Ethical Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Post, Stephen G. 2003. Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion and Service. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

Robinson, John A. T. 1964. Christian Morals Today. London: SCM.

Saiving, Valerie. 1960. “The Human Situation: A Feminine View.” Journal of Religion. 40: 100- 12.

Singer, Irving. 1987. The Nature of Love, vol. 1, 2^nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Soble, Alan. 1989. Agape, Eros, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love. New York: Paragon.

Sorokin, Pitirim. [1954] 2002. The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.

Stone, Bryan and Thomas Jay Oord, eds. 2001. Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue. Nashville: Kingswood.

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Toner, Jules. 1968. The Experience of Love. Washington: Corpus Instrumentorum.

Vacek, Edward Collins. 1994. Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. [1929] 1978. Process and Reality. Corrected edition by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press.

Williams, Daniel Day. 1968. The Spirit and Forms of Love. New York: Harper and Row.

Wispe, L. G. 1986. “The Distinction between Sympathy and Empathy.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 50.

Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. 1972. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Kansas City: Beacon Hill.

Notes

1. In his authoritative biography of Pitirim Sorokin, Barry Johnson tells of an anonymous note found in the records kept by Eli Lilly. The note, apparently written by Lilly, reads: “One of constantly interesting things about Sorokin is that he is an intellectual genius, who has arrived at truth about love and altruism via this route and has wound up his life a bitter old man with no young disciples. His interpreters are all old men, and as he once told me, ‘Sorokin will be rediscovered a 100 years hence—‘” (Johnson 1995, 268). ↑

2. Stephen Post provides this definition: “The essence of love is to affectively affirm as well as to unselfishly delight in the well-being of others, and to engage in acts of care and service on their behalf; unlimited love extends this love to all others without exception, in an enduring and constant way. Widely considered the highest form of virtue, unlimited love is often deemed a Creative Presence underlying and integral to all of reality: participation in unlimited love constitutes the fullest experience of spirituality. Unlimited love may result in new relationships, and deep community may emerge around helping behavior, but this is secondary. Even if connections and relations do not emerge, love endures” (2003, vii.). Post’s definition provides helpful language and amplification. My own definition is more concise – although it shares many similarities with Post’s. ↑

3. It also makes little sense to say that someone loves if their motives are neutral. ↑

4. Williams was influenced by Alfred North Whitehead who argued, “there is no such fact as absolute freedom; every actual entity possesses only such freedom as is inherent in the primary phase ‘given’ by its standpoint of relativity to its actual universe. Freedom, givenness, potentiality, are notions which presuppose each other and limit each other” ([1929] 1978, 133). ↑

5. I find Alfred North Whitehead’s thought on internal and external relations most helpful when proposing a theory of relatedness. “Every actual entity is what it is and is with its definite status in the universe,” says Whitehead, because “its internal relations to other actual entities” shape it ([1929] 1978, 59). Each experiential organism begins with an openness to the past, and this open window makes possible the organism’s internal relations. Once the influence from the past has entered in, the window closes. Whitehead likes to explain external relations as an organism’s influence upon future others by saying that “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’” (22). Just as each organism -- through its internal relations -- drew upon its relations with others as it came into existence, each organism subsequently becomes datum for future organisms as they come into being. See also my own work on the importance of internal and external relations (Oord, 2004a). ↑

6. My speculations here have been influenced by Alfred North Whitehead and other process philosophers and theologians, such as John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin. ↑

7. For a discussion of God’s love, see Oord 2003. ↑

8. There are other words in the Greek language that are sometimes translated “love,” but I, like most scholars, do not consider them to have archetypal status. Instead, they are expressions of one or more of the three archetypes I list. Greek words sometimes translated “love” also include storge, epithemia, nomos, and others. Storge is not used in Christian Scripture except in the negative astorgos or when the philia prefix is added. My definition of philia is intended to incorporate subtle differences storge might denote. I subsume under eros the Greek love word epithemia, or what Paul Tillich calls “the normal drive towards vital self-fulfillment” (1963, 25, see also 91-114). Nomos, as obedience to the law, is best interpreted as righteous philia, because obedience to the law was required for right relationship within the Jewish community. Other forms of love, such as romantic love, I believe are best understood as derivative forms of the three archetypes. ↑

9. Although Nygren clams that Paul “knows nothing of any distinction between true and false agape”(156), Paul does speak of false agape when he speaks of Demas, who deserted him because he was “in love (agape) with this present world” (2 Tim. 4:10). Paul implies that false agape is possible when he twice urges his readers to have sincere agape (Rm. 12:9; 2 Cor. 8:8) and also urges them to express genuine agape (2 Cor. 6:6). Writings attributed to other authors and biblical figures also refer to inappropriate agape. Examples include love of darkness (Jn. 3:19), prestige (Lk. 11:43; Jn. 12:43), wages of unrighteousness (2 Pt. 2:15), and the world (1 Jn. 2:15; 2 Tm. 4:10). ↑

10. Nygren suggests that at least Paul reserves use agape to talk about unconditional love when he says “no words are too strong for [Paul] to use in order to press home [agape’s] spontaneous and unmotivated character” (155). However, Paul’s admonition to give cheerfully grows out of his reasoning that God agape loves those who do so (2 Cor. 9:7). In other words, Paul claims that God’s love is motivated by the activity of humans, and this is not unconditional love. ↑

11. Nygren says that a feature “especially characteristic of the Pauline idea of agape” is its “opposition to all that can be called “self-love” (130). He then quotes Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:5: “Love seeketh not its own.” Paul, however, is not opposed to a healthy self-love and even uses the word “agape” to speak of it. He commands those in Ephesus, for instance, to agape their own bodies (Eph. 5:28, 33). ↑

12. See the use of agape in the following biblical passages: 2 Tm. 4:8, 2 Tm. 4:10, Jn. 3:19 and 12:43, Hb. 1:9, Rv. 12:11, and Lk. 7:5. ↑

13. On this, see Moffatt 1929, 51-56. ↑

14. Vacek writes elsewhere, “Agape is directed to the beloved’s full value for the beloved’s own sake” (179). ↑

15. Jackson develops this explanation and refers to what he calls “strong agape” in Love Disconsoled (1999, ch. 5). He summarizes what he means by strong agape in his introduction to his book, The Priority of Love (2003). Jackson writes in the latter book that “I defend a position I call ‘strong agape.’ . . . When viewed interpersonally, as the conversion of human relations wrought by the grace of God, agape involves three features: (1) unconditional willing of the good of the other, (2) equal regard for the well-being of the other, and (3) passionate service open to self-sacrifice for the sake of the other” (2003, 10). ↑

16. Of course, one might respond to my criticism and say that love is best defined simply as acting (proper/improper tradition) or being in relation (mutuality tradition). What makes agape unique, they might contend, is that agape promotes what is good. But as I argued, this use of “love” is counter-intuitive and contributes to the general confusion pertaining to the meaning of love. When we say that Mother Theresa expressed love, we don’t typically mean that she simply acted or was related to someone else. We mean that what she did was good; her actions promoted well-being. And to say that only agape promotes good is to disparage other forms of action – like friendship (philia) – that also promote good. ↑

17. One of the first to make this claim was Valerie Saiving, and her article is perhaps the most cited on this point (1960, 100-12). ↑

Theists commonly assume God’s power transcends creaturely power. Perhaps the primary way divine power transcends creaturely power is God’s ability to be a sufficient cause, guaranteeing divinely desired results. In this essay, I call this “controlling” power. In the minds of many, God transcends creatures by being capable of singlehandedly controlling others; creatures cannot control in this way.

Theists commonly think God’s love is immanent in relation to creaturely love. Divine love is immanent, in the sense that God can freely choose whether to love others. Those complex creatures capable of expressing love also freely choose whether to love others.

In contrast to these common views, I think we make better sense of God and creation if we reverse these views of divine transcendence and immanence. We should think God’s power is immanent, in the sense that God cannot act as a sufficient cause and thereby control others. And we should think God’s love is transcendent, in the sense that God does not freely choose to love. I explain what I mean by these reversals, and I point to the fruit such reversals can bring.

The Meanings of Transcendence and Immanence

Scholars apply widely diverse meanings to the words “transcendence” and “immanence” when used in relation to Creator and creatures. Some use the words to identify proximity or spatial connotations. God is said to transcend creation by being “above,” “beyond,” or “outside” it. And God is said to be immanent to creation by being “near,” “within,” or “present to” it.

I find the spatial references to transcendence and immanence unhelpful. Like most theists, I believe God is omnipresent. By this, I mean God is directly present to all existence, from the smallest to the most complex. So God is never spatially above, beyond, or outside creation. The spatial and proximity ways of thinking of God’s relation to creation are unhelpful.

I also follow the traditional view that God has no localized body. Like most theologians, I believe God is best understood as a universal, incorporeal spirit. Analogies to God as a universal spirit are always incomplete, but God has been compared to wind, breath, mind, soul, ether, gravity, and more. These words depict a deity who cannot be perceived with our five senses and yet can be causal. Believing God is incorporeal and omnipresent helps us understand why God is always within or present to the created order.

I believe we best use “transcendence” and “immanence” to describe ways God and creation differ from or are similar to one another. For as long as people have believed in God or gods, they have contemplated how God might differ (transcend) creation or be similar (immanent) to it.

Most thoughtful believers avoid saying God is entirely different (absolute transcendence) from creation, but some have embraced this view. Most also avoid saying God is entirely similar (absolute immanence) to creation. The absolute transcendence view leads to absolute apophatism, which I think is absolutely unbelievable. But absolute immanence leads to absolute anthropomorphism, which I think is absolutely idolatrous. The majority of theists place their views of God somewhere on the spectrum between absolute transcendence and absolute immanence.

Many who adopt the label “panentheism” work to carve a plausible middle way between the extremes. A common concern among self-identifying panentheists is that traditional or classical theologies err by describing God as too transcendent, especially underemphasizing divine omnipresence. Panentheism, however, is conceived in widely diverse ways. Scholars use the label to portray their understanding of how all things are “in” God.^[1] Unfortunately, the “en” in panentheism is easily thought to be in contrast to “out,” which leads to the spatial and proximity problems I noted earlier. In my attempt to bypass this common spatial problem panentheism carries with it, I coined the word “theocosmocentrism” to emphasize that both God and the created order must be central in our attempts to understand reality. A full explanation of theocosmocentrism is beyond the scope of this paper, but I have outlined its aspects in other writings.

Love

A growing number of theists recognize the importance of identifying similarities between Godly love and creaturely love. If divine love is entirely different from creaturely love, statements about God’s love likely 1) are nonsensical, 2) make it impossible for creatures to know if they imitate divine love, and 3) place into question the claim that the imago dei has anything to do with love. Divine love cannot be entirely different from creaturely love if it is to make any sense. For those who take love to be central to understanding God and reality – which a number of theistic traditions support – getting clear on love seems crucial.

In my own work, I have offered a definition of love meant to account for love, both Godly and creaturely. I define love as acting intentionally, in response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. When loving, God acts intentionally, in response to others (and Godself), to promote overall well-being. When they love, creatures do the same.

To say that the meaning of love is the same for both the Creator and creatures, is to say the meaning of love does not transcend creatures and apply only to God. But I do think divine love transcends creaturely love in other ways, including its mode, extent, adequacy, and more. For instance, God loves all creation, all the time. Creatures do not love all creation, all the time. In this sense, divine love transcends creaturely love. Divine love is perfectly adequate, because God loves from complete knowledge of what is possible to know. Such love transcends creaturely love, because creaturely love may or may not be adequate, being based on limited information. And so on.

My focus for this paper is on one particular element of divine transcendence pertaining to freedom. The majority of theists with whom I dialogue affirm an immanent conception of divine love that I believe is better regarded as transcendent. In other words, they think divine love is like creaturely love in this way, whereas I think it differs.

Most theists I encounter say God freely chooses to love. They argue that, like creatures, God can choose not to love, should God choose to do so. God's love is immanent in this respect, because creatures can also freely choose whether to love others. To many people, in fact, love requires freedom. So to them, saying God must love or necessarily loves is a contradiction.

By contrast, I think God must love and therefore necessarily loves. As I see it, love comes logically first in God’s nature, before God’s will and power. This means God does not freely choose to love; rather, it is God’s nature to love. I follow the essentialist tradition exemplified in theologians like Jacob Arminius and John Wesley who regard love as God’s foremost or primary attribute. In particular, I think divine love necessarily self-gives and others-empowers, and therefore God must express uncontrolling love. Unlike the creatures, the Creator’s nature is love.

I do not think divine love is necessary in all respects, however. We can believe God loves necessarily without thinking divine love is entirely devoid of freedom. In my view, God loves others by necessity, but God freely and contingently chooses what forms this love will take. WE might say God does not choose whether to love, but God does freely choose how to love. This view fits well in open and relational theologies that say God experiences the ongoing flow of time in a way analogous to how creatures experience it. God cannot know with absolute certainty how the present will unfold into the future, so although God must love, God freely chooses how to love in light of an open and uncertain future.

If God’s nature is love, which means God necessarily loves others, we see how this makes divine love transcendent in this important way. Creatures do not necessarily love, because they do not have eternal natures of love. In short, I propose we change from thinking God’s love is immanent by being entirely free to thinking God’s love is transcendent as a necessary expression of the One whose nature is love.

Power

I encounter few theists today who embrace thoroughgoing theological determinism. To put it in the popular vernacular, most people don’t think God is in control, in the sense of controlling every event in the universe. Nearly every theist believes God is powerful, of course. But most affirm some form of creaturely agency, free will, or autonomy vis a vis God.

While many theists reject the view that God is controlling, it seems that most believe God retains the ability to control others and occasionally use it. For instance, God may control creatures or situations to do miracles or guarantee certain outcomes. God may use such controlling power at the end of the age, the eschaton. And so on.

Creatures do not have the capacity to control others and guarantee outcomes. Of course, creaturely causation impinges upon the agency, free will, or autonomy of others. But this impinging is not the same as controlling others as a sufficient cause. This means that many theists view God's power as transcendent when comparted to creaturely power. And even if God exerts controlling power sparingly or not even once since the creation of the universe from nothing, God essentially retains the ability to control others should God desire to do so.

While we ought to reverse our views of divine love from immanent to transcendent, we ought to reverse our view of divine power from transcendent to immanent. In terms of God’s power, it makes better sense to believe God does not have the ability to control others, in the sense of being a sufficient cause. Like creaturely power, God's power is inherently uncontrolling in this sense. When it comes to being uncontrolling, divine power is immanent not transcendent.

Of course, divine power can be transcendent in other senses. I personally prefer the word “almighty” to speak of God’s power, a word many biblical translators use when speaking of divine power. In fact, I think God is almighty in at least three senses. God is 1) mightier than all others, 2) the source of might empowering all others, and 3) the one who exerts might upon all others. Divine power transcends creaturely power in these three senses. But God can be almighty in these ways while necessarily expressing self-giving, others-empowering, and uncontrolling love.

In various books and articles, I have argued for the advantage in believing God’s love is inherently uncontrolling. Because love comes first logically in God’s nature, God’s power is shaped, constrained, or limited by love. We might say that because God’s love transcends creaturely love, God’s power is immanent in the narrow sense of being, like creaturely power, inherently uncontrolling. I believe this reversal of transcendence and immanence, while uncommon, is crucial for making sense of existence.

Six Reasons to Reverse Divine Transcendence and Immanence

I find numerous advantages to reversing divine transcendence and immanence in the ways I have suggested above. In the remainder of this paper, I note six briefly. The key insights informing these advantages are, as I stated above, that 1) love logically precedes power in God’s nature and 2) God’s love is necessarily self-giving, others-empowering, and uncontrolling. These key insights entail that God necessarily loves others and cannot control creatures or creation.

Each of the advantages I list below is spelled out briefly. A full explanation would require a book for each. But I offer the primary idea of each to show the fruit of affirming the transcendence of divine love and immanence of divine power.

Science and Theology

Reversing the common view of the immanence of divine love and transcendence of divine power helps solve longstanding tensions in science and religion research pertaining to methodological and metaphysical naturalism. A God who cannot control others cannot unilaterally determine creaturely events in ways that exclude creaturely causation. This God influences creatures and creation but cannot control them.

Because creaturely causes are always at play in any event or life, science always has a role to play in the work to explain existence. Scientific work is essential to understanding reality. But because God necessary expresses love and love is causal, theology always plays a role in the work to explain existence. Consequently, we need both science and theology to provide a full explanation of an event and existence in general.

The Problem of Evil

The reversals of transcendence and immanence I have proposed help us solve the problem of evil. A God who necessarily loves and cannot control is not culpable for failing to prevent the genuine evils of the world. This God consistently influences others – from the smallest to the greatest – in uncontrolling love.

A God in whose nature uncontrolling love comes logically first cannot prevent evil singlehandedly. This God necessarily self-gives and others-empowers, which means this God of uncontrolling love cannot fail to provide, withdraw, or override the freedom, agency, self-organization, or existence this God necessarily gives. We rightly blame evil on creaturely causes, whether those causes derive from creaturely free will, self-organization, agency, or chance.

Errant Revelation

Affirming the transcendence of divine love and immanence of divine power overcomes problems related to revelational inerrancy. Fundamentalists in both the Christian and Muslim traditions are prone to believe their religious texts are without error. They tend to think their texts were inspired by divine dictation, whereby human authors did not contribute to the revelation allegedly derived from God. Fundamentalists often link their claims of innerancy to the call for salvation found in these sacred texts.

A critical examination of these texts strongly suggests they possess errors of various types. Those who still regard them providing revelation typically offer dynamic, symbiotic, or co-creational theories of inspiration to account for the divine and creaturely influence they allegedly possess. But the question remains: If God desires to teach us the way of salvation, why wouldn’t God provide an inerrant, crystal-clear, unambiguous revelation of what that salvation entails?

Affirming the transcendence of divine love and immanence of divine power as I have described them helps us account for errant but inspirational revelation. If 1) knowing about God is important for salvation, 2) God lovingly wants to reveal such knowledge, but 3) God does not have controlling power, we can make sense the errant revelations religions possess. Because God cannot control others, God could not provide inerrant, crystal-clear, unambiguous text. And yet because of God’s loving influence, such texts can reveal important truths about God and salvation.

Averting Ecological Disaster

Affirming the views of divine power and love I have outlined provides motivation for taking seriously the ecological disaster our world is experiencing now and in the future. A God whose power is immanent in the sense of not being able to control creatures or creation needs our efforts to avert ecological disaster. And a God who necessarily loves all creation wants our cooperation toward that end. It is not an exaggeration to say the future of the planet depends, in part, upon a view of divine love and power like I have proposed!

Being Confident God Loves Us

The views of transcendence and immanence I have offered provide a psychological benefit many scholars have not seemed to notice. If we take the testimonies of many theists seriously, that psychological benefit is crucial in how they believe God relates to them. We might describe this in terms of the question of abandonment: Will God ever leave us, forsake us, or stop loving us?

The common view that God freely chooses to love and relate to us provides little to no psychological comfort. Those who think God’s will comes logically prior to love in the divine nature must assume God’s love for us is either arbitrary or enforced by powers outside God. I join those who reject the notion that powers outside God constrain God’s power. But I also reject the notion that God arbitrarily chooses to love creation.

Believing that God necessarily loves us by self-giving and others-empowering goes a long way toward reassuring us that God will never leave us, never forsake us, and never stop loving us. A God in whom love for others comes first logically is a God who cannot leave us, cannot forsake us, and cannot fail to love us. To do these would mean denying God’s own nature of love, which God cannot do. A God in whose nature love comes first logically will love us and creation no matter what!

Our Lives Have Meaning

Affirming the immanence of divine power helps us believe our loves have ultimate meaning. If God either always controls or will someday control to right all wrongs unilaterally, it’s difficult to imagine how our lives really matter. After all, anything we do can be ultimately reversed, overridden, or made null and void.

But if we think God is inherently uncontrolling, it makes sense to think our lives have ultimate meaning. What we do really matters. God works with what we do – good, evil, or indifferent – to transform, transmute, and transition creation to the best states possible. But our contribution makes a real difference to the present and future, especially for our own lives.

Conclusion

It matters that we reverse how we think God transcends creation or is immanent to it. I have argued in this essay that we should think love comes logically prior to will/power in God. In creatures, will logically precedes love, which means creatures may or may not choose to love. Because God’s nature is love, however, Godly love transcends creaturely love in this sense.

I have also argued that we should believe God cannot control others. In this sense, divine power is immanent to creaturely power, because creatures are also unable to act as sufficient causes. While God is almighty and divine power transcends creaturely power in other respects, we should believe God’s power is uncontrolling love.

I have also mentioned six major ways this reversal of transcendence and immanence makes a difference. It overcomes longstanding question in the science and religion dialogue; it solve the question of why a loving and powerful God doesn’t prevent genuine evil; it explains why we have revelatory texts with errors; it explains why God needs our actions to avert ecological disaster; it reassures us that God will never leave us, never forsake us, and never stop loving us; and it provides a way to affirm that our lives have ultimate meaning.

From the beginning of recorded history, humans have sought how best to live in relation to others. In the oldest writings and artifacts, we find evidence of the human struggle to, as Alfred North Whitehead put, “live, live well, and to live better.” (FR) The major religions of the East, the West, and South develop in sophisticated ways this widespread quest to live well in relation to others.

For many of the world’s major religions, the word “love” best describes the multi-faceted ways humans attempt to live well. Wise men such as Confucius and Aristotle taught love for friends and family. Others spoke of love for one’s government, society, and country. Jesus taught love for enemies. Many sages spoke of a proper love for oneself. Most theistic traditions spoke of God as one who loved us and who was worthy of our love. Others suggested that nonhumans and all nature were proper recipients of love.

The rise of modern science brought new challenges and new opportunities to the human quest to live, live well, and live better. Science brought new ways to analyze and measure existence as we know it. It brought new tools and theories to help us make sense of life in the universe.

Some of what science brought was at odds with religious views about existence – including views about love. While religious people were able to accommodate easily some scientific theories, there is no doubt that other theories were in opposition to widely held religious views. Science seemed to suggest that we rethink how humans might best live and love in relation to others.

In the 20^th century Western world, a scientist named Pitirim A. Sorokin argued passionately that love must be studied by all of the sciences – natural sciences, social sciences, religious sciences. Sorokin came to his convictions about the importance of love studies when jailed in Russia as a political prisoner in the early decades of the 20^th century. After escaping a Russian prison, Sorokin immigrated to the United States of America and eventually accepted a professorship at Harvard University outside Boston. In 1949, he founded the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism with the financial help of Eli Lilly and the Lilly Endowment.

Sorokin’s major publishing contribution to love research was his book, The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation. In the volume’s preface, he defends the importance of scientific and religious study of love. He writes:

At the present juncture of human history an increase in our knowledge of the grace of love has become the paramount need of humanity, and an intensive research in this field should take precedence over almost all other studies and research. . . . Considering the immensity of this task, [my] contribution is very modest in comparison with the total sum of the necessary studies. Since, however, the better brains are busy with other problems, including the invention of means of extermination of human beings . . . [and] many a religious leader is absorbed in the intertribal crusades against various enemies – under these conditions somebody, somehow, (click on same slide) must devote himself to a study of the miracle of love.^[1]

Throughout the book, Sorokin offers insights into the power of love, suggestions about how love research might be done, and predictions about what would occur should society neglect the study of love.

Unfortunately, Sorokin’s research on love faded by the end of the 1950s when he retired from teaching and his research center ran out of funding. Although his own contribution to the study of love was exemplary, he inspired no immediate followers to carry his research mantle.^[2] Organized research on love from a perspective that integrated science, religion, and philosophy all but vanished.

In recent decades, interest in scientific investigation of love has reemerged. I call this emerging field of new scholarship the love-and-science symbiosis.^[3] Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common, however, is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance. And they believe that the various scientific disciplines – whether natural, social, or religious – must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. In this presentation, I would like to share some research on love in the social and natural sciences. I will close with some comments on my own research in philosophy and religion related to this research.

Human Sciences

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a new approach to psychology research began to appear. This approach, called “positive psychology,” sees itself as returning to psychology’s 19^th and early 20^th century research agenda. Positive psychologists argue that following World War II, psychologists in the West concentrated mainly upon studying and treating pathology and mental illness. Psychologists regarded their clients as passive victims, with the conflicts of childhood or later life largely controlling and oppressing these victims.^[4]

Positive psychology’s chief proponent, Martin E. P. Seligman, says that this new approach in psychology intends to study and promote positive subjective experiences. “The aim of positive psychology,” says Seligman, “is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.”^[5] Treating clients is not only about fixing what is wrong, but also about building what is right. “In the quest for what is best,” says Seligman, “positive psychology does not rely on wishful thinking, self-deception, or hand waving; instead, it tries to adapt what is best in the scientific method to the unique problems that human behavior presents in all of its complexity.”^[6]

Positive psychologists investigate a wide variety of positive human traits. “We have discovered,” says Seligman, “that there are human strengths that act as buffers against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight, to name several.” The most compelling research relates to traits or actions such as forgiveness,^[7] hope,^[8] positive emotions,^[9] gratitude,^[10] and optimism.^[11]

Some research in positive psychology draws upon or assumes the value of another branch of psychology exerting influence in love research today: attachment theory. Social scientists often regard attachment theory as a theoretical explanation for why some individuals are capable of establishing positive, prosocial relationships that promote well-being. Given that love involves relationships, investigating attachments between individuals is a natural agenda for social scientists to pursue.

John Bowlby is widely regarded as the originator of attachment theory, and his close work with Mary Ainsworth provided empirical data that refined the theory’s basic concepts.^[12] In the mid-twentieth century, Bowlby came to believe that the relationship an infant enjoyed with its mother (or significant care-giver) greatly influenced the development of that infant throughout life. The nature of the relationship an infant enjoys with its caregiver establishes a prototype that shapes later relationships.^[13] Today, developmental psychologists employ Bowlby’s basic theory in their research on infant, child, adolescent, and adult relationships.

Bowlby said that humans have an attachment behavior system that has evolved as part of the human biological substrate. This system is activated when humans (especially infants) perceive a threat. In response to the attachment behavior system, humans seek close proximity and protection as a way to find relief and a sense of safety. The system also naturally elicits in humans a positive mental representation of protecting partners in relationship. When the attachment behavior system functions well, the individual feels relaxed, confident, and is more likely to care for self and others. Evolution has endowed infants with particular learning and loving abilities that seek expression in the infant-caregiver relationship.

Psychologist Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver provide recent research that supports the hypothesis that those with a proper sense of attachment and security are more likely to act compassionately. After conducting a number of studies, the psychologists find that those who avoid attachments are consistently less compassionate and less altruistic than their more secure counterparts. “Our findings indicate,” say Mikulincer and Shaver, “that the attachment behavior system affects the caregiving system, making it likely that heightening security will yield benefits in the realm of compassionate altruistic behavior.” Anxious people, however, are prone to wallow in personal distress in response to a needy person’s plight without that distress leading to their engaging in helping behavior.

The psychologists believe that their studies should affect the way that children are raised. “Child-rearing practices and behavior in close relationships that engender attachment insecurity are likely to undermine or distort the insecure person’s subsequent compassion and altruism,” they say. “If we wish to help children and adults develop their natural potential for compassion and altruism, one way to do so would be to help them achieve attachment security.”

Altruism is a word that social scientists often use when speaking about love for others. Auguste Comte apparently coined the word in the 19^th century, and its barest meaning is its reference to “the other.” Some today use altruism to speak of other-regard. But the word has been assigned additional meanings by scientific, theological, and philosophical disciplines. We will return to some of these meanings later.

Some have defined altruism in such a way as to make acting altruistic virtually impossible. They define altruism as one acting to benefit another person with absolutely NO benefit to oneself. We might call this “absolute altruism.” Such a definition presupposes that existence is comprised of isolated selves and that persons are not essentially related to others. And this definition eliminates as altruistic any action that might provide a sense of self-satisfaction or bring reward in the afterlife. Because so many acknowledge that helping others brings a sense of self-satisfaction or reciprocal benefit and so many religious people believe that God rewards helpfulness in some way, absolute altruism seems unattainable.

Social scientist C. Daniel Batson’s landmark book, The Altruism Question: Toward a Social-Psychological Answer, brings together a number of quantitative studies. Highlighted in the book is his own research attempting to answer this question: Could it be that we are capable of having another person’s welfare as an ultimate goal and that not all of our efforts are directed toward looking out for ourselves?^[14]

Batson defines altruism as “a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare.”^[15] This definition makes altruism’s measuring stick the actor’s primary motives to increase the welfare of another. If the actor’s ultimate goal is to increase another’s welfare, the actor is altruistic – even if the actor also benefits in some way. Altruism so understood does not require, but may include, self-sacrifice. Moving the discussion from measuring consequences to assessing primary motives allows Batson to reject absolute altruism and investigate what I call “primary motive altruism.”

Batson addresses what we all know from our experience. That is, not every person who seeks to relieve another’s need is acting with primary motives that are altruistic. It could be, for instance, that the helper’s primary motive is to gain social and/or self rewards. Or the helper’s primary motive may be to avoid penalties. Or a helper’s primary motive may be to reduce his or her own feelings of personal distress.

The hypothesis Batson seeks to test in his research is his claim that feeling empathy for the person in need evokes motivation to help in which these benefits to self are not the primary goal of helping. To test this hypothesis, Batson created various situations in which he could manipulate the factors that indicate whether one’s primary motives are egoistic or altruistic. He and others have done approximately such twenty-five studies. In these studies, Batson and other researchers have discovered no clear support for any of the egoistic explanations that one’s primary motive for helping others is some benefit to the self. The studies support, instead, the hypothesis that those who strongly empathize with someone in need will sometimes act with the well-being of that other as their primary motive. These quantitative studies provide valuable data to social scientific love research.

A central feature of Batson’s important research is his manipulation of laboratory environments to gauge the motives of experiment participants in controlled situations. Others suggest, however, that research on human love should focus on the kind of person that acts lovingly, not on particular actions analyzed in controlled experiments. In particular, say some, social scientists would do well to study those whose behavior emerges from a loving personality or character. Loving persons are the most fitting examples for scientific research. And this research is best done by examining expressions of love in day-to-day life outside the laboratory.

Sociologist Samuel Oliner and his wife Pearl have collected real-world data and proposed hypotheses related to what they call “the altruistic personality.” Their research is focused upon interviews of those who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe during World War II. This research is highly suggestive of what kind of person acts lovingly and what might influence humans to develop loving personalities.

The Oliners and their assistants interviewed almost 700 persons who lived in several countries in Nazi-occupied Europe. Those interviewed included 406 individuals who had rescued Jews, 126 individuals who chosen not to rescue Jews, and 150 Jewish survivors. Most rescuers helped individuals of a different culture, ethnicity, and religious persuasion. Nonrescuers were included in the study to address how the attributes rescuers and nonrescuers differ.

The Oliners provide numerous first-hand accounts of those who risked their lives rescuing Jews in their book, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. The following account given by a Dutch rescuer serves as an example of these testimonials:

The Germans came and took a look at our house. They told us we had to take in a German couple who were living on the coast. We were worried because they would find out we were keeping Jewish people. They took the living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen upstairs. Slowly they found out the truth.

One day we had soup on the kitchen stove. The German woman came downstairs and lifted the lid to see what was in the pot. Willy – the Jewish guy – saw that. He said, “It’s not ladylike to lift the lid from the pot.” I told him, “Be careful what you say; don’t make trouble!”

I had the feeling something would happen. I told my husband, “Let’s go away, let’s find a place,” but he said, “You’re crazy!” But I had a feeling. My husband should have listened to me.

This woman, the German lady, went to the police. She told them we had a Jew in hiding. She said, “I would like to have the Jew taken away from there, but don’t do anything to the people.” She was referring to us. She thought the police were safe. But the guy she spoke to worked for the NSB, the Nazis. She didn’t know that.

It was four o’clock on a clear Sunday afternoon. My husband had just come home from taking our little girl on a sled ride. He was home just ten minutes when the Gestapo came – with a dog. The dog ran upstairs, and there was shooting. My little girl was crying because her Daddy was screaming. I took my little girl and ran out the door. The dog smelled out the hiding place. My husband wouldn’t say anything, so they set the dog on him. It bit off his hand. They shot my husband and one of the Jews.^[16]

This Dutch rescuer and her husband knew the great risk associated with helping Jews. And yet they chose to take this risk – at their own peril.

In their book, The Altruistic Personality, the Oliners present hundreds of stories of altruistic rescuers. The risks these people took for the well-being of others were often astounding. These accounts lead naturally to the question, Why did some people in Nazi Europe choose to risk their lives in their effort to help Jews? Or to put the question more generally, Why do some people sometimes act altruistically and others do not?

According to the Oliners, those who consistently act altruistically have an altruistic personality. When the Oliners say that people have altruistic personalities, however, they do not mean that these people always act altruistically. Rather, they mean that some people are more likely than others to make altruistic decisions.^[17]

The Oliners speculate that people who see themselves as closely related to others are more likely to act for the good of others at some cost to themselves. “What distinguished rescuers,” say the Oliners, “was not their lack of concern with self, external approval, or achievement, but rather their capacity for extensive relationships – their stronger sense of attachment to others and their feeling of responsibility for the welfare of others, including those outside their immediate familial or communal circles.”^[18] Most altruistic rescuers, say the Oliners, developed this sense of deep relatedness to others during childhood.

A person’s identification with religion was, according to the Oliner’s research, not strongly related to whether or not that person chose to rescue Jews. However, the way in which one interpreted their religious teaching and commitment did influence their tendency to help. Those who believed that religion instructed them to care for all humans were more likely to rescue Jewish victims.

The Oliners conclude that those who rescued Jews were ordinary people. “What distinguished them [from nonrescuers and bystanders] were their connections with others in relationships of commitment and care. It is out of such relationships that they became aware of what was occurring around them and mustered their human and material resources to relieve the pain…. They remind us that courage … is available to all through the virtues of connectedness, commitment, and the quality of relationships developed in ordinary human interactions.”^[19]

Biological Sciences

We turn from the human social sciences to the natural science of sociobiology. In sociobiology, much research and many theories are offered that influence how we might think about love as the way in which we might live, live well, and live better. The discussion of love in sociobiology is typically framed in terms of altruism and egoism, rather than care, compassion, or virtue.

When sociobiologists talk about altruism and egoism, they typically have in mind something very different than what human science researchers have in mind. Earlier we noted that social scientist Daniel Batson defines altruism as a motivational state with the primary goal of increasing another’s welfare. For sociobiologists, however, motives have very little if anything to do with altruism. Sociobiologists define altruism as an organism’s reproductive success, especially in terms of passing along that organism’s genetic heritage.

Although written thirty years ago, Richard Dawkin’s little book, The Selfish Gene, continues to exert influence and receive extensive criticism in the contemporary sociobiology debate on altruism. Dawkins argues that humans are machines created by their genes, and humans are the survival machines that carry these genes. The selfish gene acts in self-interested ways to ensure its continued influence in future bodies.

The survival of genes into future generations depends on the efficiency of the passive bodies in which they live and helped to build. “The genes are master programmers,” says Dawkins, “and they are programming for their lives. They are judged according to the success of their programs in copying with all the hazards that life throws at their survival machines, and the judge is the ruthless judge of the court of survival.” (ch. 4)

Dawkins admits that genes might act in ways that seem unselfish in some circumstances. He accepts, for instance, the kin selection hypothesis that sometimes organism’s will act for the good of another whose genetic structure is similar. The more genetically similar the other may be, the more likely the gene will act self-sacrificially to benefit that related other. For instance, the altruism of parents for their young is explained by the fact that parents and their children share so much in common genetically. A mother, says Dawkins, is “a machine programmed to do everything in its power to propagate copies of the genes which ride inside it.” (ch. 8)

As I mentioned earlier, many criticize Dawkins‘s theories in The Selfish Gene. Perhaps the most common criticism is that Dawkins should not use the word “selfish” in relation to genes. The word implies that genes have motives. While Dawkins admits that genes do not have motives, he uses language throughout the book that suggests such. Others have argued that Dawkins places too much emphasis upon the power of the genes. His gene-centered approach allows little or no room for other selective forces and influences in evolution.

The theory in evolutionary biology receiving the most attention in recent years was set forth by Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson in a 1998 book they titled, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior. Sober, a philosopher, and Wilson, a biologist, revived multi-level selection theory. Among other things, the theory claims that genes are not the only selective force in evolution. Specifically, the authors suggest that group-selection provides an explanation for why some act self-sacrificially for those to whom they are not closely related genetically.

Group selection theory says that altruists thrive as a group when in competition with groups composed of selfish individuals. “To be sufficient,” argue Sober and Wilson, “the differential fitness of groups (the force favoring the altruist) must be strong enough to counter the differential fitness of individuals within groups (the force favoring the selfish types” (1998, p. 26). Group-selection theory goes a long way in accounting for how altruism might emerge and succeed, and Wilson has recently employed the theory to account for altruism emergent in religious groups (2002). But the authors readily admit that group-selection theory also suggests that “niceness” can predominate within a group while “nastiness” prevails between groups (Sober and Wilson 1998, p. 9). From the group-selection perspective, altruism toward the outsider remains unexplained.

Research on nonhumans in recent years suggests that many creatures act cooperatively in their quest to live, live well, and live better. Primatologists such as Jane Goodall, Christopher Boehm, and Frans DeWaal have shown that nonhuman primates act in sophisticated ways to live better in community with others.

DeWaal’s research shows that primates act in ways that help themselves, their families, and their extended community experience greater well-being. For instance, chimpanzees cooperate by grooming each other, thereby eliminating insects that could harm. And chimpanzees console and soothe one another after fights and conflict. DeWaal notes, however, that “altruism is bound by what one can afford. The circle of morality reaches out farther and farther only if the health and survival of the innermost circles is secure.” (Good Natured, 213).

Lee Alan Dugatkin has compiled massive evidence in his book, Cooperation among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective, that nonhumans work together to attain greater well-being. Dugatkin chronicles this fitness advantage of intra-group cooperative relatedness by offering chapters that convey scientific research on cooperation among fish, birds, nonprimate mammals, nonhuman primate mammals, and insects (1997, chs. 3-7).

In conclusion, much important research related to altruism, cooperation, and even love is emerging in the biological sciences. Part of my own work has been to point out some of the philosophical and theological presuppositions that underlie the theories being debated in this realm.

Cosmology

Before I briefly indicate the direction my own research in relation to what I’ve discussed already, I want to mention one important book for sciences related to cosmology. The book is coauthored by the theologian and philosopher Nancey Murphy and the mathematician and physicist George F. R. Ellis and titled, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics. In it, Murphy and Ellis draw together research and hypotheses from a variety of disciplines to make a complex but convincing set of arguments about cosmology and love.

For some time, philosophers have occasionally made claims about the cosmological status of love. Teilhard de Chardin, the French anthropologist and philosopher, talked about love as an energy pulsing at the heart of the universe. C. S. Peirce argued similarly. Such claims about love and cosmology are not typically made by physicists today.

Murphy and Ellis begin their cosmological argument for love by noting that for some time, many physicists have professed the universe “fine-tuned” to enable the evolution of complex creatures like us. The laws of physics present at the Big Bang, together with the development of favorable environments during the evolution of the universe and planet, make possible the emergence and maintenance of complex life. Extremely small changes in any of the multiple cosmological conditions would apparently have eliminated the possibility of life altogether. These premises supply the basis of what is typically called the Anthropic Principle.

Of course, the question many ask when hearing that the cosmos is finely tuned is, “How did it get this way?” Unfortunately, one cannot design a scientific test to discover the ultimate causes in the creation of the universe. The scientific method is not capable of confirming theories about ultimate origins.

Many who believe that God exists have suggested that only divine action explains cosmological fine-tuning. Of course, the Anthropic Principle does not prove that God exists. But one might argue that a grand theory that includes a God-hypothesis might incorporate fine-tuning in its attempt to offer a more adequate explanation of existence. This is, in fact, the kind of argument Murphy and Ellis make.

The novelty of the authors’ argument is their proposal that the finely tuned cosmos tells us something about how God acts. If we suppose that God set up the laws of the universe in the beginning, these laws and God’s noninterference of them might tell us something about deity. After all, God apparently works in concert with nature, suggest the authors, never overriding or violating the very process that God created.

God acts in this way because the ultimate purpose of the universe is to make possible free moral responses to the creator. At the outset of creation, God decided to make a universe that includes freedom, and God voluntarily withholds divine power out of respect for that divinely bestowed liberty. The pair of authors sum up their argument by saying, “The fine-tuning of the cosmos can be taken up into a theology that sees God’s noncoercive respect for the freedom and integrity of creatures go all the way back to the initial design of an anthropic (intelligence- and freedom-producing) universe.”^[20]

God’s cosmological acts – especially God’s refusal to override creaturely freedom – also tell us something important about the divine nature, say Murphy and Ellis. They tell us that God is love. God voluntarily became self-limited and continually renounces self-interest for the sake of the other, even when this self-renunciation causes God pain.

The evolution of life reveals that God’s loving creation of free beings can only be achieved through a slow, indirect, and painful route. The whole process of creation reflects, say the authors, the “noncoercive, persuasive, painstaking love all the way from the beginning to the end, from the least of God’s creatures to the most splendid.”^[21]

My Own Work

I conclude this presentation with some brief words about my own work investigating issues related to love, science, and religion. Part of my work involves keeping scientists, scholars of religion, and philosophers aware of theories and hypotheses related to love. Many scholars of religion have no idea that scientists are busy researching issues related to love. Many scientists are unaware of religious and philosophical traditions that inform the questions and research agendas of science.

I serve as theologian for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, is the institute’s president. The John Templeton Foundation provides the majority of the institute’s multi-million dollar funding. It, along with the Fetzer Institute and various smaller programs, has funded more than 40 major scientific research projects, sponsored conferences of varying sorts, and funded course competition programs to encourage teaching of love from religious and scientific perspectives. I have taken a lead in organizing and speaking at many of these conferences.

The second aspect of my own work entails my effort to offer a definition of love suitable for research in science, religion, and philosophy. Last May, I attended a meeting in Washington, D.C. as the theological consultant for about many major scientific research projects on love. The projects were interesting, but it quickly became apparent that researchers assumed diverse and sometimes contradictory notions of love. One leader stood and praised this variety, arguing that we don’t have to agree on a love definition. We can each have a different understanding.

While I do not think that any particular definition can be fully adequate to understanding love, I strongly disagree with this leader. I think that we need a definition of love. If scholars and researchers fail to define love clearly, the present surge in the scientific studies of love will fail to produce the positive results that they otherwise might. When we are not clear about what love is, it becomes difficult to judge the value or contribution of any particular investigation.

My recent work involves offering and defending a definition of love adequate for those doing research in the love-and-science symbiosis. My hope is this definition will be helpful to those outside the academy as well. My own definition of love is this: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being.^[22]

Analysis of this definition leads to a third aspect of my own work: considering how the fundamental aspects of love are influenced by scientific, religious, and philosophical theories. For instance, some religious scholars have suggested that love is primarily if not exclusively a matter of intention. For them, conditions and environment play little or no role in love. For some theologians, creatures are incapable of expressing love at all. Only God expresses love and any loving actions we see in creatures is really God acting unilaterally through these creatures. For some scientists, by contrast, love is primarily if not exclusively a matter of conditions and environment. For them, love can be explained entirely by neural substrates, genes, or societal conditioning. And yet for others, love has nothing inherently to do with well-being and everything to do with mere desire or sexuality. Part of my work is helping the many participants in the love, religion, and science conversation reconsider what seem to me to be inadequate understandings of the elements of love.

Finally, much of my own work has a decidedly religious tone. As someone who believes that the most plausible explanation for existence requires the existence of God, part of my work is in offering hypotheses related to God’s role in inspiring creatures to live, live well, and to live better.

My hypothesis is that God always loves; God is love, as the writer of 1 John in the Christian scriptures puts it. God desires increases in overall well-being.

Personal experiences and the research from science noted above indicate that love requires relations. Love involves intentional responses to others. Consequently, I suppose that God is related to all things and has always been related to some world or another. In the speculation that God has always been related to some world or another, I agree with the teachings of Alfred North Whitehead and others in process theology. And in speculating that there has always been some world, I conform to the views of physicists such as Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University. Steinhardt and Turok contend that space and time have always existed in some form. Using developments in superstring theory, they say that the Big Bang of our universe is a bridge to a pre-existing universe. Creation undergoes an eternal succession of universes, with possibly trillions of years of evolution in each. Gravity and the transition from Big Crunch to Big Bang characterize an everlasting succession of universes.^[23]

Among other things, the claim that the God of everlasting love has always been related to other nondivine beings allows me to overcome what I believe is a deficiency in the Murphy/Ellis proposal I addressed earlier. The advantage of believing that God has always been related to some universe permits me to discard the idea that God has ever coerced others. The creation of this universe did not entail divine coercion. In my hypothesis, noncoercion is an essential feature of how God lovingly relates to creation. Self-giving and creating love is part of God’s very nature, and God necessarily grants freedom to creatures. God relates lovingly to all creatures by inevitably granting freedom to everyone capable of so acting. As God provides freedom to each agent, each responds to the varied choices each faces. This means that it makes no sense to suggest that God could fail to provide freedom to creatures. In other words, God’s essential love relations with the cosmos entails that God cannot fail to offer, withdraw, or override the power for freedom that creatures require in their moment-by-moment life decisions.^[24] This theological modification gets God off the problem of evil hook. God cannot be held culpable for failing to prevent genuine evils. God cannot be culpable, because God essentially and lovingly relates to all creatures by providing them with power for free choices. God could no more choose to cease providing freedom to others than to choose to cease existing. The genuine evil of the world results from debilitating choices free creatures make. Most importantly, the God not capable of coercion cannot be held culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil. It makes no sense to claim, “God is love,” if a God capable of coercion has the power to prevent genuine evils and yet fails to do so. But the God hypothesis that I am suggesting entails God’s incessant bestowal of freedom to others and thereby exonerates God from the charge of not deterring evil.

For more from the author Thomas Jay Oord, see his website https://thomasjayoord.com or the Center for Open and Relational Theology https://c4ort.com

1. Sorokin, The Ways and Power of Love, xii. ↑

2. Barry Johnson, in his authoritative biography, Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography, tells of an anonymous note found in the records kept by Eli Lilly. The note, apparently written by Lilly, reads: “One of constantly interesting things about Sorokin is that he is an intellectual genius, who has arrived at truth about love and altruism via this route and has wound up his life a bitter old man with no young disciples. His interpreters are all old men, and as he once told me, ‘Sorokin will be rediscovered a 100 years hence—‘” (Lawrence, Ks.: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 268. ↑

3. Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2004). ↑

4. Martin E. P. Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” Handbook of Positive Psychology, C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4. ↑

5. Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” 3. ↑

6. Seligman, “Positive Psychology, Positive Prevention, and Positive Therapy,” 4. ↑

7. See especially the work of Robert D. Enright, Julie Exline, Michael E. McCullough, Stephen J. Sandage, Everett L. Worthington. ↑

8. See especially the work of Jennifer S. Cheavens, Shane J. Lopez, Diane McDermott, and C. Richard Snyder. ↑

9. See especially the work of Barbara Fredrickson. ↑

10. See especially the work of Robert A. Emmons. ↑

11. See especially the work of Charles S. Carver, Christopher Peterson, Michael F. Scheier, and Martin E. P. Seligman. ↑

12. Along with their books, see their classic essay: Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bowlby, J. “An ethological approach to child development,” American Psychologist, 46 (1991) 333-341. ↑

13. See, John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. (New York: Basic Books, 1969). ↑

14. Ibid., vii. ↑

15. Ibid., 6. ↑

16. Ibid., 74-75. ↑

17. Ibid., 12. ↑

18. Ibid., 249. ↑

19. Ibid., 260. ↑

20. Nancey Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 249. ↑

21. Ibid., 247. ↑

22. ↑

23. Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, “A Cyclic Model of the Universe,” Science. 296 (May 24, 2002), 1436-1439. ↑

24. Process theologians champion this point. See for instance, David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976). ↑

Love and Trinitarian Relations

Theologians in traditions alleging that love provides the central or foremost divine attribute encounter an apparent conundrum. The puzzlement is this: Given that love requires relations, how can one claim that love is the central, or even an essential, attribute of deity if, as the dominant Christian tradition has insisted since Irenaeus,^[1] the world was created ex nihilo? To say it another way, if, before the world’s creation, God was alone, i.e., unrelated, how can love constitute the divine essence (haecceity)? If God’s relations with the world are voluntary rather than necessary, how can we say, “God is love” and mean, “love is essential to divinity?” By “essential,” I mean necessarily so; i.e., love is an essential property of God if and only if there are no possible circumstances in which God exists and lacks love.

Before going further, let me be specific about what I mean by “creatio ex nihilo.” I understand this ancient doctrine to mean that God voluntarily created the universe out of absolute nothingness; I am not referring to creation out of chaos, creation out of Godself, or creation from something else. One reason some Christians affirm creatio ex nihilo is the doctrine’s implication that nothing exists that essentially frustrates divine omnipotence. Another reason some affirm the doctrine is that creatio ex nihilo implies that God exists essentially independent from the created order.^[2]

Jürgen Moltmann addresses the conundrum of how love can be essential to deity and yet the world be created ex nihilo in The Trinity and the Kingdom. Moltmann begins by expressing well the argument that God must be essentially related if love can be convincingly deemed an element of the divine essence. He acknowledges, “love cannot be consummated by a solitary subject. An individuality cannot communicate itself: individuality is ineffable, unutterable.”^[3] This implies, says Moltmann, “if God is love, then he neither will, nor can, be without the one who is his beloved.”^[4] Furthermore, because love relations imply some degree of need, God cannot be, in all ways, self-sufficient: “If God is love, then he does not merely emanate, flow out of himself; he also expects and needs love.”^[5] Using “suffering” in its classical sense, which means to be affected by another, Moltmann argues that, “if God were incapable of suffering in every respect, then he would also be incapable of love.”^[6]

Moltmann’s observations regarding the necessity of relations for divine love correspond with what humans experience as the structures required for loving. Because of this correspondence, a crucial base is secured for speaking analogously about divine love and nondivine love. This also means that, because analogies between creatures and divinity can be drawn, creaturely emulation of the divine is conceivable.

Subsequent to arguing that relations are necessary for expressions of divine love, Moltmann offers his solution to the question of how one can claim that love is an essential attribute of deity despite God’s not having always been related to some world or another. His solution is his claim that relations for divine love have always been present in Godself. In Trinity, says Moltmann, God “is at once the lover, the beloved, and the love itself.”^[7] This intraTrinitarian love is illustrated by the fact that, “in eternity and out of the very necessity of his being, the Father loves the only begotten Son. . . . In eternity and out of the very necessity of his being, the Son responds to the Father’s love through his obedience and his surrender to the Father.”^[8] Three notions together – divine persons, divine relations, and change in divine relations -- provide the basis for conceiving of intraTrinitarian love.^[9] Because love has everlastingly been expressed through intraTrinitarian relations, then, love can be considered an essential attribute of God.^[10] Christian philosophers and theologians in traditions that insist upon the primacy of love for divinity have been attracted to Moltmann’s Trinitarian hypothesis.

Implications of Creatio Ex Nihilo for Trinitarian Theology

An option other than Moltmann’s intraTrinitarian one is available to theists who want to affirm that love is essential to God because God has always been related to others. This option entails the claim that God has always been related to some realm of nondivine actualities or another, and God has always loved this realm. Charles Hartshorne and some process theists call this option “panentheism.”^[11] Hartshorne’s doctrine of panentheism entails the claim that God is essentially related to the finite order, but God does not require this particular finite order, i.e., this particular order is not everlasting. God is distinct from, and not fully governed by, finite relations, but God has always been related to a world. To say it another way, panentheism affirms both God’s essential immanence and essential transcendence, because divine internal and external relations with creation are essential. God is essentially immanent in the world, because God is necessarily influenced by all; God is essentially transcendent, because God’s decisions about how to react to the world are not fully determined by the world. These divine reactions are felt by the world as proactions as God directly influences the world in a moment-by-moment open adventure in relationship.

The panentheist doctrine, however, is not widely accepted by contemporary Trinitarian theologians like Jürgen Moltmann. For one thing, panentheism contradicts the time-honored Church doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, which is undoubtedly one reason panentheism is often not taken seriously by theologians who wish to remain “orthodox.” But should Christians prefer creatio ex nihilo to panentheism if the former undermines a coherent Christian notion of the Trinity? I believe that few have taken this question seriously, and, therefore, I address this question in the remainder of this essay.

Creatio ex nihilo’s ramifications for Trinitarian theology are profound. To put the present concern bluntly, creatio ex nihilo shatters Rahner’s rule. This rule, that “the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity, and vice versa,” as Karl Rahner puts it, does not apply if God created the universe ex nihilo.^[12] It does not apply because, if there were a time when nothing existed external to God, nothing would have existed for God to economize. If the members of the Trinity subsist in sinless perfection, divine activity to secure salvation prior to the creation of the world is superfluous. The economic Trinity is ultimately dispensable.

This conclusion is profoundly illustrated in its effects upon Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s basic hypothesis in God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. How can God essentially be for us, if, at one time, there did not exist an “us” for whom to be? Or, to use her more technical language, how can oikonomia essentially be identified with theologia -- such that the economy of salvation essentially expresses the life and work of God -- if there was a time in which no one existed to be saved? If creatio ex nihilo is affirmed, “God for us” is merely accidental, not essential, to what it means to be God. Opera trinitatis ad intra is necessary to divinity; opera trinitatis ad extra is unnecessary. Such a conclusion effectively dulls LaCugna’s ostensibly razor-sharp Trinitarian thesis.^[13]

How does Moltmann handle the problem one faces when affirming both creatio ex nihilo and the essential identification of the immanent and economic Trinities? At least three options avail themselves. Moltmann could

(A) conclude that God’s relations with the world are accidental while Trinitarian relations are essential,

(B) conclude that God’s relations with the world are essential and that Trinitarian relations are essential,

or (C) conclude that God’s relations to the world are accidental and that Trinitarian relations are accidental.

The first option (A) shatters Rahner’s rule, thereby undermining the attempt to identify essentially the economic and immanent Trinities. The second option (B) leaves Rahner’s rule intact, but denies the ancient Church doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. This option supports the pan-en-theist doctrine of the divine-world relation, because it entails the hypothesis that God necessarily relates to some realm of nondivine actualities or another. The third option (C) supports creatio ex nihilo, but it inevitably denies both Rahner’s rule and the notion that the immanent Trinity is essential to divinity.

Moltmann chooses the first option (A): the hypothesis that God’s relations with the world are accidental while Trinitarian relations are essential. IntraTrinitarian love is necessary love; God’s love for the created order, however, is unnecessary for divinity and, therefore, voluntary. There could have been circumstances in which God existed and yet God did not love a created order.

The first option (A) is illustrated when Moltmann speaks of divine creative and responsive love: “God is love. That means he is engendering and creative love. . . . That [also] means he is responsive love, both in essence and freely.”^[14] Moltmann’s dominant hypothesis is that the theopathic element of divine love is essential only in eternal Trinitarian relations; theopathy is accidental when speaking of God’s relations with the world. This does not imply that God loves the world any less genuinely or completely; the issue is not one of degree or purity. What it indicates, however, is the different modes of these loving relations. God’s love is necessarily responsive in Trinitarian relations, but divine love is merely accidental in response to nondivines – because the world itself is merely accidental.

Having seen that Moltmann chooses an option that entails accidental divine love for the world, it would seem to follow that his hypothesis also breaks Rahner’s rule, i.e., it fails to equate essentially the economic and immanent Trinities. Moltmann seems to recognize the implications his preferred option has for what can be said coherently about the essential Trinity. He also realizes that a doctrine of creation is required that can do justice to the essential relationship between the immanent and economic Trinities.^[15]

Moltmann entertains several hypotheses in The Trinity and the Kingdom for conceiving the correlation between the creation of the world and the Trinity. Sometimes he speaks of God creating from chaos; other times of God creating from nothing. He even places these apparently contradictory notions alongside each other; he speaks of divine creating as “creation out of chaos and creatio ex nihilo.”^[16] He claims that “creation [is] God’s act in Nothingness and . . . God’s order in chaos.”^[17] However, the evidence from his statements about God’s love for the world being voluntary while the love between the Father and Son is necessary leads one to conclude that Moltmann ultimately affirms creatio ex nihilo, rather than creation from chaos.^[18]

The creation hypothesis Moltmann proposes most vigorously, however, is based soundly upon intraTrinitarian suppositions: “If we proceed from the inner-trinitarian relationships of the Persons in the Trinity, then it becomes clear that the Father creates the one who is his Other by virtue of his love for the Son.”^[19] Moltmann notes that the letter to the Ephesians speaks of Christ as the foundation of creation from all eternity. He concludes, “from eternity God has desired not only himself but the world too, for he did not merely want to communicate himself to himself; he wanted to communicate himself to the one who is other than himself as well.”^[20] Because of this desire to communicate to nondivine individuals, it was “through the eternal Son/Logos [that] the Father creates the world.”^[21]

The claim that the Father creates the world “through the eternal Son/Logos” provides at least two possible solutions to the dilemma at the base of questions pertaining to how, as Rahner would say, “the ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity, and vice versa.” One solution is that God has eternally economized the world through the Son, because the world was created out of God’s own “substance.” This would imply, however, that the world essentially is God and that there has always been something in the Son in need of economizing. Although sometimes Moltmann speaks of “the creation of the world out of God”^[22] and claims, “God acts on himself when he acts creatively,”^[23] this alternative is not the one he embraces most vigorously. He denies that, because the Father creates the world out of the Son, the world is God; Moltmann deplores pantheistic theories that equate God with the world.^[24]

Moltmann’s best and, as far as I know, novel attempt to overcome the problems arising when one affirms both a Trinitarian love theology and creatio ex nihilo is his claim that “the idea of the world is inherent in the nature of God himself from eternity.”^[25] This means that “the idea of the world is already inherent in the Father’s love of the Son.”^[26] Because God creates the world in his love for the Son and creates through the Son, the Son “is the divinely immanent archetype of the idea of the world.”^[27] The solution to how God and the world are related, then, is to suppose that the idea of the world has been eternally present to deity in the Son.

Does this hypothesis, however, overcome the dilemmas generated for Trinitarian theologians who affirm creatio ex nihilo? I suggest that it does not. First, with regard to the economic Trinity, it is difficult to imagine how an idea can be “economized” or be graced with salvation. Actual subjects may be transformed, ideas may not. Indeed, Moltmann argues that there was a “time” in which theologia was not oikonomia when claiming that “‘creation in the beginning’ . . . means the history that precedes salvation history. . . . God’s history with his world therefore begins with creation.”^[28] In short, this “idea theory” fails to provide a basis for equating the economic and immanent Trinities.

Second, with regard to God’s essential love for the world, it is difficult to image how an idea can either receive love or respond lovingly. Actual subjects may receive or respond in love, ideas may not. Ideas, being abstract and not actual, may be necessary for love to be expressed, but they can neither act or be acted upon.

Third, with regard to the creation of the world, it is difficult to imagine how an idea can be material for constructive activity. Although ideas are necessary for the work of creating, actualities serve as resource materials for construction; ideas, having no physicality, are not such materials. Ideas are not constructive materials; they are forms by which materials become congruent. At best, Moltmann’s hypothesis provides justification for speaking of accidental divine potentialities; but such potentialities fail to provide sufficient justification for speaking of God’s essential activity. Potentialities do not provide justification for essentially identifying the immanent and economic Trinities.

But what about panentheism? Can Moltmann retain his desire to equate the economic and essential Trinities were he to espouse a form of panentheism? Although I will not spell out the specific features of such a Trinitarian theology, I will suggest that the affirmation of panentheism would solve the problem that arises when identifying the Trinity as essentially economic as well as immanent. For the God who has always been related to some world or another may have always had reason for oikonomia. For such a God, both opera trinitatis ad intra and opera trinitatis ad extra would be essential; i.e., there would be no circumstances in which the Trinity exists and Trinity not be both immanent and economic. Furthermore, the love God has for Godself in Trinity and the love God has for the world would be essential, rather than accidental, to divinity. Trinitarian theologians of Moltmann’s ilk should consider the virtues of a panentheistic understanding of the God-world relationship in order to promote a coherent and adequate Trinitarian theology.

Conclusion

The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo carries conceptual baggage for Christians wishing to maintain, as John Wesley did, that love is the “darling” divine attribute. Moltmann’s attempt to uphold the centrality of divine love by speaking of divine love as essential in Trinity, by equating the essential and economic Trinities, and by attempting alternative creation hypothesis is valiant but finally unconvincing. The sticking point, which prevents him from offering a coherent and adequate theological scheme, is his affirmation of creatio ex nihilo. Were Moltmann and other contemporary Trinitarian theologians to espouse panentheism, however, it would be possible for them to identify the immanent and economic Trinities as essential to divinity, while also affirming coherently that love is essential to God.

Notes

1. Ironically, while it may be true that Church, largely influenced by Irenaeus, eventually adopted the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo partly to combat the Gnostic notion that the world was inherently evil, a Gnostic originally formulated the doctrine. The Gnostic Basilides is the originator of the doctrine. Basilides found that the doctrine fit well with Greek philosophy’s denial that a temporal God acts in history. Philo, Justin, Athenagoras, Hermogenes, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, and John Scotus Erigena were among many early Christian theologians and philosophers who found no good reason to affirm the creation out of nothing hypothesis. For perhaps the definitive work on the origination and church adoption of creatio ex nihilo, see Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Thought, (trans. A. S. Worrall [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994]). ↑

2. I should not that, while both of these reasons are tied to explicit philosophical or theological concerns, neither enjoys explicit support in the Bible. However, both reasons (potential or actual sovereignty and essential divine independence) have profound implications for drawing genuine analogies between human and divine love and, therefore, for how we can comprehend that “God is love.” For a brief discussion of this, see my chapter entitled “A Process Wesleyan Theodicy: Freedom, Embodiment, and the Almighty God” in Thy Name and Thy Nature is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue (Nashville: Kingswood, forthcoming) chapter eight. ↑

3. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 57. ↑

4. Ibid., 58. ↑

5. Ibid., 99. ↑

6. Ibid., 23. ↑

7. Ibid., 57. ↑

8. Ibid., 58. See also, 106. ↑

9. Ibid., 174. ↑

10. I have chosen to ignore, in my text, the important debate regarding how it can be that love is exchanged between members of the Trinity and this not imply tri-theism. Lewis Ford states the problem well when responding to Clark H. Pinnock’s conception of the social Trinity:

    If there is a perfect harmony of will among the Persons, such that they cannot possibly conflict, then we may wonder whether there can be any genuine “other love.” At least there cannot be any I-Thou encounters between them, as Martin Buber conceived them, for in such encounters one (or both) parties are enriched by the values of the other. There can be no enrichment if both already share those values fully. In that case “other love” degenerates into self-love. On the other hand, if there is genuine “other-love” among the Trinitarian members, we may wonder whether this is not really tri-theism after all (Lewis Ford, “Evangelical Appraisals of Process Theism,” Christian Scholars Review 20:2 [December 1990]: 158).

    This criticism is also offered by Barry L. Whitney in his essay “Divine Immutability in Process Philosophy and Contemporary Thomism” (Horizons 7 [1980]: 67).

    Moltmann does not easily, if at all, escape the tri-theistic criticism. He says, for instance, that “the unity of the divine tri-unity lies in the union of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, not in their numerical unity. It lies in their fellowship, not in the identity of a single subject” (The Trinity and the Kingdom, 95; see also 157). ↑

11. 11 Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 499-514; Charles Hartshorne, “Whitehead’s Idea of God,” The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp, 2nd ed. (New York: Tudor, 1951), 549-50. ↑

12. Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 22 ↑

13. LaCugna is aware of many issues surrounding the affirmation of creatio ex nihilo and God’s economia. Her solution is to propose a doctrine of creatio ex amore, which is a solution I greatly appreciate, when considering a doctrine of creation. However, she does not provide a hypothesis for conceiving the “nuts and bolts” of her notion of creatio ex amore and appeals, instead, to mystery: “the reason for creation lies entirely in the unfathomable mystery of God” (LaCugna, God for Us, 355). ↑

14. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 59 (emphasis his). ↑

15. Ibid., 97-114. ↑

16. Ibid., 109, 110; see also 113. ↑

17. Ibid., 109. ↑

18. Jon D. Levenson has argued that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not present in the Old Testament. We must face the implication of the affirmation that God, as the creator of the world, confronts forces that oppose divine creation, he contends. To say that creation is directed against something should be taken as a denial of the venerable doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that is, if one defines “nothing” as “absolutely nothing.” The conception of “nothing” in the Old Testament, however, is usually identified with things like disorder, injustice, subjugation, disease, and death. “To them,” writes Levenson, “‘nothing’ was something -- something negative. . . . When order emerges where disorder had reigned unchallenged, when justice replaces oppression, when disease and death yield to vitality and longevity, this is indeed the creation of something out of nothing” (Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994; New York: Harper & Row, 1987], xix-xxi). ↑

19. Ibid., 112. ↑

20. Ibid., 108. ↑

21. Ibid. ↑

22. Ibid., 111. ↑

23. Ibid., 110. ↑

24. Ibid., 113. ↑

25. Ibid., 106. ↑

26. Ibid., 108. ↑

27. Ibid., 112. ↑

28. Ibid., 100. ↑

I begin by expressing a deep debt of gratitude to the authors of The Openness of God, three of whom are with us today. What a powerful book this has been in my own life and in the lives of many Christians like me who were not satisfied with what Clark Pinnock called “conventional” theism.

I encountered the book not long after it was published in 1994. It confirmed many of my own intuitions, as one raised in the Arminian/Wesleyan/Holiness tradition. Since reading it, I’ve encountered many people who after reading the book said, “That’s something like what I’ve been thinking, but I thought I was the only one!” Openness writers expressed those ideas in biblical language typical of the Christian tradition in general and my own evangelical-Wesleyan tradition in particular. And more specifically, as Dave Basinger has mentioned, The Openness of God created more space for Evangelicals like me to deny classic views of God’s foreknowledge.

I want to talk very briefly today about the future of open theology. Richard Rice, John Sanders, and David Basinger have already made some comments related to the future. Of course, open theists like us who think the future is not yet knowable by God should be the first to admit they don’t know what the future will be! But I intend to look at the present state of open theology, as I see it, and speculate about what the future might be in light of what I see currently occurring.

Philosophy

Open theology has made an impact in a variety of academic disciplines, schools of thought, and ways of thinking. Some of its greatest success has been in analytic philosophy circles. Thanks to the efforts of many, including David Basinger and Bill Hasker, it is common for an openist philosopher to be given hearing at philosophy of religion conferences. Some do not specifically self-identify as openist philosophers, but their views of God’s relation to time and foreknowledge place them in the openist camp.

In the future, however, I speculate that openness ideas will continue to expand in analytic philosopher circles but grow more rapidly among theistic philosophers of religion captivated by Continentalist philosophy. Such philosophers may not embrace the label “openist” philosopher, but the fundamental drive of Continentalist philosophy, as I see it, is overturning oppressive structures, systems, and ideas. An open view fits naturally with such liberating concerns, because liberationist philosophies seem to presuppose agency, potential novelty, a measure of iconoclasm, and forward movement though time.

Liberation

Speaking of liberation, open theology seems to have enjoyed less influence among the wide swath of theological perspectives I put under the general category of liberationist theologies. Whether such theologies have gender, ethnic, or political concerns, I know only a few self-identifying openness theologians thinking through openness implications for liberationist theologies. I think this lack of influence has more to do with the sociological and cultural positions of prominent opennist thinkers thus far and not anything inherent in liberation theology. But TC Moore is right when he talks about Open theology’s need for greater ethnic, cultural, and gender diversity.

My hunch is that the future of openness theology will be strongly influenced by liberation theologians of various types. I think this in part because of the inherent openness intuitions of liberationist thinking. But I also think openness thinking will expand because of blossoming interest in liberationist theologies among peoples of diverse cultural, sexual, and political orientations.

Science

The open view of God has a strong representation in the contemporary science and theology discussion. As Bethany noted, openness advocates in the UK like John Polkinghorne, Keith Ward, and Arthur Peacocke are known for their denial of classical divine foreknowledge. In the U.S., prominent scholars such as Philip Clayton, Ian Barbour, John Haught, and others deny classical foreknowledge and embrace the basic theology advanced by the Openness of God authors.

Richard Rice has already mentioned the 2007 and 2008 conferences on science and open theology. These Templeton funded events brought together for the first time many American openness thinkers with the intent was to think about openness categories in relation to science. What struck me most was the eagerness of openness thinkers to engage scientific issues and the general scientific endeavor. Openness theology has implicit and explicit appreciation of empiricism and epistemological realism, which I think makes open theology a natural conversation partner with contemporary sciences.

Ethics

Does open theology incline one toward a particular stance on ethics? I think it does, although I know very few who have argued this carefully. John Sanders’s paper on the virtues of open theism takes a significant step in that direction.

In my view, love will be at the center of an openness ethic. So too will be the kind of moral responsibility that only comes when one believes creaturely action has genuine influence upon all others and God. Open theology’s emphasis upon a persuasive noncontrolling God may undermine the kind of justification that religious leaders like the one Bethany encountered give for their overpowering leadership styles. An openness ethic will encourage empathy, vulnerability, listening, and suffering love.

A few have begun to ask what Openness Theology might contribute to the global crisis of our time: climate change. Sharon Harvey’s work comes to mind, as does Michael Lodahl’s. But much more must be done, at least by Evangelically-oriented open theologians.

Grassroots

I think the future of open theology will be largely shaped by those whom TC Moore said are at the grass roots. General features of open theology resonate deeply with laity and pastors. The conversations occurring on the internet and in local churches give me great hope that open theology will continue spread. We must continue to ponder how we might foster, support, and encourage this aspect of open theology.

Process Theology

I want to conclude my remarks with comments about the relationship between open theology and process theology. In Evangelical circles, openness theologians have primarily argued with or against theologians informed by the Calvinist theological perspective. In those discussions, open theologians have often worked hard to distinguish themselves from process theology on a number of points.

The formal conversation between open theologians and process theologians began in 1997, when the Center for Process Studies brought together for discussion self-identifying openness thinkers and self-identifying process thinkers. I was a graduate student at Claremont during this time, and I what I remember most from those meetings was the common Christian piety both the process “liberals” and openness “evangelicals” shared. In fact, many of the process thinkers shared personal stories of growing up in Evangelical traditions only to leave after finding open and relational ideas attractive.

In 1998, many of the openness thinkers returned to Claremont for the Center for Process Studies Whitehead conference. The papers given by David Griffin, William Hasker, Richard Rice, Nancy Howell, and David Wheeler comprised the book, Searching for an Adequate God, edited by Clark Pinnock and John Cobb. Griffin, Hasker, Howell, Rice, and Wheeler

While the authors of The Openness of God worked diligently to distinguish their view from process theology and while many self-identifying openness thinkers from Evangelical communities continue to make these distinctions today, my hunch is that the future of openness theology will involve more blurring of lines between the two theological perspectives. I doubt the two will ever entirely collapse into one perspective, but I expect the overlap and hybridization to increase. I offer five reasons I think the lines between open theology and process theology will continue to blur in future years:

1. 1. It is difficult to identify the “essence” of open theology. As a number of internet communities dedicated to openness theology have discovered, significant diversity abounds about central issues like Christology, eschatology, ethics, biblical inspiration, and even divine power. The closest thing to an essence in open theology is a rejection of the classical view of divine foreknowledge and insistence that the future is open even for God. Openness thinkers themselves have alternative ways among themselves of talking about God’s omniscience and relation to the future. Alan Rhoda and William Hasker, for instance, are both prominent openness philosophers with different views of how to conceptualize God’s omniscience. Likewise, it’s difficult if not impossible to find an essence of process theology. John Cobb
   2. The second reason I think open and process lines will blur pertains to how theologians self-identify. Some self-identifying process theists – such as Philip Clayton and Joseph Bracken – affirm views of original creation (creatio ex nihilo) and divine power that some self-identifying open theologians think characterize open theology. And some self-identifying open and relational theists affirm views of original creation and divine power that some process theologians think characterize process theology. Consequently, on this key issue, the boundaries blur.
   3. The third reason I think the lines will blur between open and process theology is probably more of a recommendation than anything else. Christian history suggests that those who make it their goal to define and then protect the essence of a view are conservatives whose theology often fails to survive or be widely influential. Protecting and promulgating a concise set of propositions can be effective in the short term and with those whose basic orientation is to conserve. But for those unsatisfied with the status quo, a theological tradition is better served to promote a few basic intuitions that might capture the imaginations of young and emerging theologians who are creative, passionate, intelligent, and activist-minded. I think David Basinger is wise, for instance, when he says he has “no interest in trying to preserve a set of core essential openness beliefs.”
   4. The fourth reason I think open theology and process theologies will blur pertains to a phenomenon many call “post-evangelicalism.” A shrinking number of young Christians raised in the Evangelical tradition want to self-identify as Evangelicals. They still love Jesus and still think theology and the Church are important. But their reluctance stems for a variety of social, cultural, and political reasons. It also comes from an openness to blur boundaries, push envelopes, and color beyond the standard Evangelically-authorized lines. Bryan Stone “I’m a democrat”
   5. The final reason I think open theology and process theologies will blur pertains to a substantive issue several have mentioned already today: theodicy. Although the openness theodicy offered by the authors of The Openness of God sounded far better than conventional theodicies that claimed God foreordained and foreknew evil, in The Openness of God and in other books written by openness theologians, many openness thinkers admit open theology as they formulate it doesn’t resolve the problem of evil like process theology can. William Hasker, David Basinger, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, and Richard Rice have done work in this area. John Sanders’s book, The God Who Risks has been especially influential. And my own essential kenosis proposal might be seen as an attempt to bridge – what Bethany called “a creative approach” – the theodicy gap between openness and process theologies.

Let me conclude:

I could be completely wrong about all that I have said so far. In fact, that’s one strength of open theology: it fits our experiences of reality, including the experience of being wrong about our predictions about what might occur. But even false prediction can become resources God might use when calling us into the ever new reality we call our moment by moment, open and relational existence.

May God bless us all and open theists in particular in our endeavors to follow the Apostle Paul’s advice to imitate God, as beloved children, and live a life of love as Christ loved us.

I endeavor to identify how process theology approaches the diverse traditions and theologies that are typically identified as Evangelical.^[1] By Evangelical, I have in mind what is labeled as such in the American context, although most of my comments will hold true of the thought and practices of Evangelicals worldwide. Evangelicalism is a broad socio-theological movement, and the dogmatic claims made by its members are quite diverse. Considering this, Evangelicalism is an essentially contested tradition, and within it an intense debate and contest about how best to develop and explain its essential ingredients occurs.^[2]

Because who should be identified as Evangelical and what counts as Evangelical theology are hotly contested issues, I begin by noting how process theology might consider five affirmations that many would consider the core of Evangelicalism.^[3] These five characteristics of Evangelical thought provide orienting concerns from which one might gauge various affinities and disparities that Evangelical theology might have with Process theology. I will look at the fifth affirmation, having to do with the doctrine of God, in detail than the others. In that discussion, I address in particular the dialogue that has emerged between process theology and a way of Evangelical thinking called “Openness Theology.”

The first affirmation at the core of Evangelical piety and theology is this: The Bible is principally authoritative for matters pertaining to salvation. At first glance, this affirmation may appear to be a major point of contention between Evangelicals and Process thinkers. Although those influenced by process thought have made important contributions to biblical studies,^[4] one rarely if ever hears Process theists characterized as “back to the Bible” advocates or proponents of sola scriptura. In fact, many biblical scholars with ties to Process theism have been at the forefront of identifying ways in which some biblical passages have actually undermined the well-being of women, nonhumans, and ethnic minorities.

More than a few Evangelicals have suggested the Process theology subverts the biblical witness because they believe Process theology considers philosophy its most authoritative source. Ronald Nash, in a book of essays he edited written primarily by Evangelicals who oppose Process theology, argues that “most process theologians appear to have a highly selective biblical hermeneutic. Scripture is welcomed as authoritative when it agrees with [process] panentheist opinions. But when Scripture conflicts with panentheist beliefs, it is conveniently ignored or casually discarded.”^[5] Evangelicals have suggested that Process scholars place more emphasis upon reason and contemporary experience as sources for constructive theology than they do the biblical witness.

But when considering a Process approach to Evangelicalism’s core belief about the authority of the Bible, perhaps a more interesting question might be asked: “Must the principal authority of the Bible be a source of contention between Evangelical and Process theists?” Although Process theists may or may not have typically looked to the Bible as authoritative for matters of salvation, Process thought as such does not require one to reject the Bible as supremely authoritative for such matters. There is nothing at the core of Process thought that prevents a Process theist from claiming that one document or individual is more effective in revealing who God is and what salvation entails.^[6]

Even if a Process theist were to take Scripture as supremely authoritative for matters pertaining to salvation, the questions of interpretation would still need to be addressed. Within Evangelicalism a wide range of interpretive techniques, practices, traditions, and rules are adopted. For instance, Anabaptists typically interpret Scripture differently from Wesleyans, and both groups interpret Scripture differently from those in Calvinist traditions. And, just as there is no uniform hermeneutic within Evangelicalism, biblical scholars with a Process orientation differ among themselves on interpretive concerns.^[7]

A second core affirmation of Evangelicalism is that a conversion from sin, made possible by Jesus Christ, is necessary for full salvation. The issues of salvation typically lead to asking whether Christianity is the only religion offering salvation.

Process thought is at odds with Evangelical theologies that are exclusivistic. Inherent in the basic Process understandings of God and God’s relation to the world is the claim that God self-reveals to all peoples. While Evangelicals have not typically embraced a thoroughgoing pluralism that says that any religious tradition is as good as Christianity, some traditions within Evangelicalism have adopted an inclusivist position. In fact, Evangelicals in the Wesleyan theological tradition have typically affirmed that God’s prevenient grace provides a measure of light for salvation to all peoples.^[8] While Process thought affirms the Evangelical tenet that salvation can be found in Jesus Christ, it only sharply disagrees with particular traditions within Evangelicalism that make claims about Christianity’s exclusive truth to the absolute exclusion of salvific truth in other religious traditions.^[9]

Also at stake in the question of full salvation is the issue of life after death. Evangelicals typically claim that life after death is an important aspect of salvific hope. While early process figures such as Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne were at best ambivalent to the idea of an afterlife and at worst hostile, many contemporary process theologians affirm life after death as an important doctrine supporting Christian hope. Such process thinkers contend that human souls have the capacity to survive bodily death. And such souls continue to exist indefinitely in new modes of existence.^[10]

A third affirmation that lies at the core of Evangelicalism is the one: Christians should be active in the midst of a decadent culture, attempting to evangelize and transform it. One of the characteristics of Evangelicals is their evangelistic fervor to spread the good news of Jesus. And Evangelicals believe that the spreading of this gospel is necessary in part because so many in this world live in sin. It is common for Evangelicals to talk of overcoming the world and being in the world and not of it.

Process theology affirms this Evangelical tenet. Like Evangelical theologies and practices, Process traditions typically emphasize the importance of transformation, both individual and corporate. But Process theologians themselves typically differ from Evangelicals about what needs to be done to transform a decadent culture and, furthermore, what particular features of culture cause decadence. Evangelicals typically align themselves with the conservative, socio-political side of various cultural-ethical issues; Process theists typically align themselves with the progressive/liberal side. For instance, Process theists have generally been supportive of the push to recognize Christian ordination status for homosexuals. Evangelicals have generally thought that such ordination would not be step forward in the transformation of culture.

When it comes to evangelizing and transforming culture, perhaps one could summarize the substantive disparity in this way: both Process and Evangelical theists want to increase the common good, but theists in these traditions generally have differing ideas about what needs to be done to increase overall flourishing. In theory, however, an Evangelical might embrace Process theology while also affirming conservative socio-political positions.

“Process theology” and “liberal Christianity” are not synonyms, although most Process thinkers to date have sympathies with liberal Christianity. It may be that some Evangelicals have distanced themselves from Process thought due chiefly to the social and political views of particular Process thinkers rather than due to core notions of Process theology itself. Core notions of Process theology itself, however, transcend the conservative-liberal split.

The fourth affirmation I find at the core of Evangelicalism is that Christian formation (labeled variously as “Christian spirituality,” “holiness,” “discipleship,” “Christian morality,” “growth in Christ,” etc.) is indispensable to the Christian life. This affirmation is probably the one least explored by those engaged in the Process-Evangelical dialogue. At its best, process theology joins Evangelical theology in offering conceptual resources for accessing and embodying habits of holiness. While Process theologians may disagree with Evangelicals about which specific disciplines and behaviors are most conducive to the promotion of abundant life, both traditions recognize the importance of developing various virtues in response to God’s call to creative transformation.

One particular branch of Evangelicalism – the Pentecostal-Charismatic arm – may be a key conversation partner with regard to the issue of Christian formation in the Evangelical-Process dialogue. While the majority of Christian Process theists have been more comfortable adopting forms of worship and religious expression typical of mainline denominations, Process theism offers conceptual tools to Pentecostals and Charismatics who wish to speak of direct encounters with God.

Most Process theologians affirm that all individuals directly perceive God through nonsensory perception. According to Process theism, all Christians intuit, albeit variably, God’s call and power. In other words, the claims of Pentecostals and Charismatics to be in direct communication with God find a sophisticated philosophical basis in Process philosophy. In fact, such genuine experiences of God might be expected from individuals who are intensely attuned to God’s moment-by-moment calls to action.^[11]

Process thought can do more, however, than simply provide a basis for conceptualizing the divine origin of ecstatic religious experience – as intellectually important as that is. It can also provide Pentecostals and Charismatics with tools for qualifying their claims about what God has revealed to those with ears to hear. Because Process thought includes the speculation – for a variety of reasons, not least being the problem of evil – that God cannot unilaterally determine any creaturely state of affairs; it also provides a basis for being cautious about claims that God desires particular actions. Rather than absolute certainty with regard to knowing God’s call for how to act in one situation or another, Process thought suggests that the convictions of individuals should lay along a range of degrees of confidence. One may be extremely, somewhat, or hardly confident that God desires a particular action. This tool of qualification prevents one from equating God’s Word absolutely with one’s own words, without denying that one can possess a degree of confidence that God desires some particular course of action instead of another. It is this confidence of God’s direct leading that, from a Process perspective, Pentecostals and Charismatics rightly champion.

I turn to the fifth Evangelical affirmation, which has to do with how one conceives of God. Most Evangelicals would affirm the following statement: God is perfect in love, almighty, without beginning or end, one (although Trinitarian), personal, free, omniscient, the creator and sustainer, both transcendent and immanent in relation to the world, the ground of hope for the final victory of good over evil, and the proper object of worship.

It is here that the conversation – perhaps mostly mutual criticism – has been most intense.^[12] Process theology calls for conceptions of God that are often at odds with Evangelicalism’s Reformed theological traditions (especially Calvinism). In particular, the notions of divine omnipotence, omniscience, and temporality proffered by Process theists oppose conceptions that those in the Reformed tradition typically regard as orthodox. Process theists deny that God can unilaterally determine any creaturely state of affairs; Reformed theologies stress such theological determinism. Process theists deny that God knows actual future events, because the future is not yet knowable. Reformed Evangelicals typically believe that God knows actual future events, because God is a nontemporal being who sees all of time in an eternal now. While Process theists can agree with Reformed Evangelicals with regard to the formal aspects of affirmation five I listed above, Reformed Evangelicals and Process theists strongly disagree with how each of these formal terms are best understood.

Evangelicalism, however, is comprised of many groups and individuals that embrace theological underpinnings other than those whose source is the Reformed tradition. In particular, Arminian, Wesleyan, and Pentecostal traditions share many general theological affinities with Process thought.^[13] The most fruitful theological interaction between Process theists and Evangelicals comes from Evangelicals who describe their theological position as the “Open View.”^[14] In their 1994 landmark book, The Openness of God, Clark H. Pinnock and co-authors laid out an Evangelical position that shares several affinities with Process theology.^[15] These authors argue that their position is more theologically faithful to the broad biblical witness than other theological options in the Evangelical tradition.^[16] If Open Evangelicals are correct about their faithfulness to Scripture and if the affinities that their view shares with Process theism are grounded in this theologically faithful interpretation, perhaps, as I suggested earlier, the principal authority of Scripture for matters pertaining to salvation need not be a stumbling block in the Evangelical-Process dialogue.^[17]

Clark Pinnock’s words of justification for offering the Open view of God might just as easily have been spoken by a Process theist. Pinnock argues that, “theological integrity and the credibility of the concept of God in our time are both at stake. It is difficult to believe the conventional model of God because of its intellectual contradictions and lack of existential appeal.”^[18] Pinnock continues by noting that, “apologetically, the open view of God embraces a modern understanding of reality as dynamic not static.”^[19] Open theists join with Process theists in identifying the metaphysics at the heart of classical theism as inadequate. Pinnock speaks of “excessive Hellenization” that has caused numerous conceptual distortions in formal Christian theologies.^[20] Rather than eschew constructive philosophy altogether as many in recent years have (unsuccessfully) attempted to do, Open theists look to relational categories for philosophical support.

Process theists share the Open intention to talk about God’s actual existence and how that existence affects all reality. It also speculates and offers provisional statements about who God is and what this divine being is doing. The Process and Open approach to theology differs from those that merely discuss community beliefs, linguistic referents, or parts of symbol-systems. As John B. Cobb, Jr. puts it, “Evangelicals and process theologians are both concerned about the way things are. . . . Because process theology is proposing ideas about questions that are real questions for evangelicals and claiming continuity between its answers and biblical ones, a good many evangelicals take it seriously.”^[21]

Atop the list of theological affinities shared by Open and Process theists is the conviction that love should be the principal theme in Christian theology.^[22] Richard Rice, who assumes the task of offering biblical support for the open view advanced in The Openness of God, claims that the open view expresses two basic convictions Scripture supports. First, love is the most important quality humans attribute to God. Second, love is more than care and commitment; it also involves sensitivity and responsiveness.^[23] From a Christian perspective, says Rice, love is the first and last word in the biblical portrait of God.^[24] When one enumerates God’s qualities, one must not only include love on the list, but, to be faithful to the Bible, one must put love at the head of that list. A doctrine of God faithful to the Bible must show that all God’s characteristics derive from love.^[25] “Love, therefore, is the very essence of the divine nature,” argues Rice.”^[26] He notes elsewhere “Process thought is often described as a metaphysics of love, an attempt to develop a full-fledged metaphysical system from the fundamental insight that God is love. The open view of God shares this emphasis upon the priority of love.”^[27]

Openness theists follow Process theists in rejecting some traditional doctrines of God, because they believe that some classic theologies have characterized God as an aloof Monarch removed from the world’s contingencies. “The Christian life involves a genuine interaction between God and human beings,” says Pinnock. “We respond to God’s gracious initiatives and God responds to our responses . . . and on it goes.”^[28] Open theists embrace the notion that God is like a loving parent who, as Pinnock puts it, possesses “qualities of love and responsiveness, generosity and sensitivity, openness and vulnerability.”^[29] God is a person who experiences the world, responds to what happens, relates to humans, and interacts dynamically with creatures. God’s experience changes in the divine give-and-take of interactive relationship.

What gets Pinnock and his Open cohorts tangled in the roughest of intra-Evangelical tussles is their denial of divine exhaustive foreknowledge of free creaturely actions.^[30] Like Process theists, Open theologians like Pinnock argue that “God knows everything it is possible to know, but this cannot include future free decisions because they cannot in principle be known by simple definition. If they could be known, they would not be free.”^[31] This uncertainty upon God’s part establishes that the future remains open, not completely certain. Their belief that the future is in some sense genuinely open is one reason these Evangelicals label their position the “Open” view of God.^[32]

Hand-in-hand with the Open denial that God knows exhaustively the actual future is the denial that God is nontemporal. Open theists join Process theists in claiming that we best conceive of God as temporally everlasting rather than timelessly eternal. Conventional theism’s notion that God is nontemporal implies that deity is totally actualized, immutable, impassible, and outside of time and sequence. The idea of God as temporally everlasting, by contrast, means, says Pinnock, that “the everlasting One is active and dynamic through all of this flow” and that “the past, present, and future are real to God.”^[33]

In his monograph, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness, Pinnock provides a list of convictions that Process and Open theists hold in common. “We:

• • make the love of God a priority;
  • hold to libertarian human freedom;
  • are both critical of conventional theism;
  • seek a more dynamic model of God;
  • contend that God has real, not merely rational, relationships with the world;
  • believe that God is affected by what happens in the world;
  • say that God knows what can be known, which does not amount to exhaustive foreknowledge;
  • appreciate the value of philosophy in helping to shape theological convictions;
  • connect positively to Wesleyan/Arminian traditions.^[34]

Given these affinities, Pinnock acknowledges, “Conventional theists often characterize the open view as a form of process thought.” His additional remark indicates the political ramifications of this characterization: “in an evangelical context, [that] is tantamount to proving it heretical without any further ado.”^[35]

Open Evangelical theists are to be commended for understanding Process thought – both aspects that they appreciate and aspects that they reject – much better than most contemporary Evangelicals.^[36] Some criticisms of Process thought rendered by Open theists, however, might be shown to be less consequential than Open theists believe. For instance, one important difference between Open theism and Process theism is the God-world relationship each supposes. Process theists suppose that God necessarily relates to some realm of nondivine individuals or another. Open theists suppose that God’s relations with the world are essentially accidental, such that at one time God existed apart from any world whatsoever. Pinnock implies that, to exist, the God of Process theism requires some world or another: “The openness view . . . denies the process conviction that God is ontologically dependent on the world and that God always has and must have a world to experience. [God] does not need a world in order to be God.”^[37] Richard Rice describes the Process doctrine of the God-world relation in this way: “Without a creaturely world, God would have no actuality and hence no existence.”^[38]

While Rice and Pinnock are correct that classic Process texts, such as Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality, can be interpreted as stating that God could not exist without some world or another, this claim opposes the core Process notion that God exists necessarily. After all, a being that exists necessarily requires nothing else in order to exist. The point of the more robust form of Process theism is not that God cannot exist unless some world or another exists. Rather, the point is that a metaphysical scheme supposing that God necessarily (involuntarily) and everlastingly relates to some world is preferable to a scheme that claims that God’s relations to the world are accidental (wholly voluntary) and provisional. If Process theists were to attack the Open conception of the social Trinity by claiming that, to exist, this social Trinitarian God requires intraTrinitarian relations, Process theists would commit this same conceptual error. After all, Open theists believe that God exists necessarily. In short, both Open and Process theists affirm that God necessarily exists such that nothing could end God’s existence. At issue is the comparative strength of the two different metaphysical visions concerning with whom and by what mode God relates.

The classical Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo often arises in the Open-Process dialogue about God’s mode of relation to the world.^[39] Process theists reject this doctrine on a variety of grounds, not the least of which is its implications for the problem of evil.^[40] If God at one time possessed the power to create unilaterally from absolutely nothing, God would always retain essentially the ability to determine unilaterally. The God capable of exercising total control through unilateral determination is culpable for failing to prevent the genuine evils that occur in life. As David Griffin puts it, “The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo . . . [implies] (1) that the creatures have no inherent power with which to offer any resistance to the divine will, and (2) that there are no metaphysical principles, inherent in the nature of things, descriptive of the kinds of relations that necessarily obtain either between God and the creatures or among the creatures themselves.”^[41] Given these implications, the problem of evil remains insoluble.^[42] In order for God to be exonerated for failing to prevent genuine evils from occurring, God must not possess the ability to withdraw or override the power for freedom that creatures inherently possess.

The concept of divine unilateral power implied in creatio ex nihilo also has implications for how one understands God’s activity in biblical inspiration, evolution, the oppression of women and minorities, and the sanctioning of political authorities. Process theists wonder, if God can totally control any event and if crystal-clear unambiguous revelation would assist humans in securing salvation, why isn’t the Bible crystal-clear, unambiguous, and inerrant? Or, if God can unilaterally determine events, why did God allow a multi-billion year evolution, complete with manifold nonhuman suffering? Or, if God can totally control events, why has God permitted the oppression and domination of women (especially by Westerners) and minorities? Or, finally, if God can unilaterally determine any course of events, does this mean that present and past political regimes are divinely sanctioned?

Some Open theists are cognizant of the difficulties that arise for the problem of evil and other matters when they affirm creatio ex nihilo and the doctrine of divine power that it implies.^[43] They continue to affirm this Church doctrine, however, for a variety of reasons. For instance, Open theists believe that accounting for various miracles recorded in Scripture requires this traditional creation doctrine. As David Basinger puts it, “God not only created this world ex nihilo but can, and at times does, intervene unilaterally in earthly affairs.”^[44] Pinnock argues, “Certain events in world history can be the special effects of divine activity.”^[45] The miracle of Jesus’ resurrection “goes beyond persuasion,” Pinnock continues, “God brought it into effect unilaterally without consultation.”^[46] Open theists also contend that the type of power necessary for creatio ex nihilo supports an eschatology that guarantees God’s eventual victory over evil.

Process theists might respond, however, that divine unilateral determination (i.e., metaphysical coercion) is not required for the creation of the world, the triumph of good over evil, or the occurrence of miracles. David Ray Griffin presents this line of argumentation. Griffin argues that the idea that God only creates persuasively is more plausible given the age and pain-ridden evolution of the world. He suggests that the Big Bang beginning of our universe through the divine persuasion of chaotic elements, however, “would produce quasi-coercive effects.”^[47] After this initial activity bringing order out of chaos, God would not be capable of quasi-coercion due to the evolution of increasingly complex power and freedom in those with whom God subsequently relates. Griffin also defends his belief that (1) God will ultimately be victorious over evil and (2) salvation can be experienced in a life beyond bodily death.^[48] It is important to note, however, that his vision is not based upon his belief that this victory can be unilaterally guaranteed by God; victory can be gained only through divine persuasive love. Finally, Griffin turns to evidence from parapsychology to argue that events traditionally considered miracles caused by divine unilateral determination could rather be understood as events in which God’s persuasive call, alongside the extraordinary powers of certain humans, instigates astonishing occurrences.^[49]

A glance at core notions of Open theism when compared with core notions of Process theology suggests that affinities are many and the prospect for mutual transformation promising. Perhaps a way forward in this interaction is to address the metaphysics and logic of a claim that each prizes highly: “God is love.” Both theologies consider God in relational love categories. Both theological trajectories wish to affirm that God’s nature or essence is love.

Process theists wonder whether the Open claim that God’s essence is love is valid given the Open claim that God does not essentially or necessarily love the world. “If divine compassion for creatures is purely voluntary, not inherent in the very nature of who God is,” argues Griffin in criticism of the Open view, “we cannot say that God simply is love.”^[50] John B. Cobb, Jr., suggests that this emphasis upon God’s voluntary love leads to unwarranted anthropomorphism, because it implies that God’s will precedes or controls the divine nature.^[51] In order for love to be God’s essence, God’s actions must arise involuntarily from the divine nature. The abstract features of God’s nature were not chosen, according to Cobb’s preferred formulation, but these features are true of God by definition.

Open theists, however, endorse the widely assumed notion that love requires freedom. We don’t typically think someone loving if that one is required to give a gift rather than freely doing so. Besides, it seems odd to express praise and gratitude to someone who acts by necessity rather than freely. Pinnock describes the position this way,

Imagine a happily married couple. Having a baby is something they could freely choose to do and they would certainly love it. But one must say that, while their love for the child expresses their love for one another, they are not required to have a child in order to love. God’s love for the world expresses his loving essence too, but it is not a necessary expression of his essence. . . . Putting it bluntly, God’s nature would be complete and his love fulfilled even without a world to love.^[52]

To the Process criticism that God’s social attributes, e.g., love, require a world to which God must relate, Open theists reply that the God they envision should be considered socially loving, because deity expresses love in the everlasting relations of intraTrinitarian life.^[53] Pinnock explains the Open position in this way: “we hold that God is ontologically other than the world and in a certain sense ‘requires’ no world. God does not have to relate to some other reality because he is internally social, loving, and self-sufficient.”^[54]

A partial resolution to the debate may emerge in the Process notion of divine dipolarity that Open theists such as Richard Rice accept. Rice argues that because “God’s love never changes, God’s experience must change.”^[55] In light of dipolarity, it might be said that the fact that God expresses love is a necessary and involuntary aspect of the divine nature. God did not choose this abstract characteristic; it comprises one element of who God is by definition. However, how God expresses love is free choice on God’s part. God decides how to express love when considering and feeling how the world has responded to God in the past.^[56] A worshipper need have no qualms about expressing praise and gratitude to the God who freely chooses the manner in which divine love is revealed.

This resolution helps with one aspect of the Open-Process dialogue, but it does not solve the issue that most divides Open Evangelicals and Process theologians: divine power. After all the qualifications are made, neither Process nor Open theists currently appear willing to budge on this issue. While, on one hand, Process theists consider ways in which the theory of divine power they espouse might be portray divine activity as more effective or faithful to the biblical witness, they apparently will not eschew the claim that God cannot unilaterally determine any state of affairs. This claim resides at the heart of their answer to the problem of evil, the theory of evolution, their interaction with relational feminist theologians, and other concerns. On the other hand, while Open theists are eager to consider ways in which the theory of divine power that they espouse can cohere with a coherent doctrine of divine love, they apparently will not eschew the claim that God can unilaterally determine some states of affairs. They believe that Evangelical doctrines of eschatology, Christology, and miracles are undermined if God is conceived as unable to exercise coercive power on occasion. At present, the issue of divine power seems to have created an impasse.

In this essay, I have briefly identified how Process theology approach Evangelical theology. I’ve noted some affinities and disparities that the two theological traditions share. Perhaps a passage of Scripture serves as an appropriate conclusion to this enterprise. As Process and Evangelical theologians wrestle with how Christians ought to think and live, these words from the great love chapter might be appropriate:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13:12, 13)

Notes

1. Timothy P. Weber considers the definition of Evangelicalism “one of the biggest problems in American religious historiography” (“Premillennialism and the Branches of Evangelicalism,” in The Variety of American Evangelicalism, ed. Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston [Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991], 12). ↑

2. For more on this, see William J. Abraham, The Coming Great Revival: Recovering the Full Evangelical Tradition (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 9. Some dispense with the task of identifying essential ingredients of Evangelicalism and speak instead of “family resemblances.” Unfortunately, however, this practice typically fails to identify what commonality members of this family share. ↑

3. I offer examples here of those whose list of basic Evangelical affirmations is the same or similar to mine. Affirmation five is an exception from the comparisons I make here, because those who offer their lists of Evangelical core convictions rarely, if ever, include an explicit affirmation pertaining to the doctrine of God. My list of core characteristics is the same as the list given by Martin E. Marty in “The Revival of Evangelicalism and Southern Religion,” The Varieties of Southern Evangelicalism, ed. David Edwin Harrell, Jr. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1981), 9-10. The list Thomas A. Askew offers is the same as well (“A Response to David F. Wells,” in A Time to Speak: The Evangelical-Jewish Encounter, ed. A. James Rudin and Marvin R. Wilson [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987], 41-42). George Marsden, in a volume of essays he edited entitled Evangelicalism and Modern America, offers core aspects nearly identical to my own except that he stresses that God’s saving work is recorded in Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984), ix-x. James Davison Hunter, in American Evangelicalism, stresses the inerrancy of the Bible as important for Evangelicals while adding the Second Coming of Christ and the “individuated conception of personal, social, and institutional problems” as characteristic of Evangelicals (47). However, in his later book Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, these additional stresses are downplayed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), ch. 2. Richard Quebedeaux, in The Young Evangelicals, includes all of the four I suggest except the emphasis upon spiritual growth (3-4). Donald Bloesch, in The Future of Evangelical Christianity: A Call for Unity and Diversity (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 5-6, 17-18, follows the same form as Quebedeaux. Jon Johnston also does not include the spiritual growth aspect, although he implies it throughout his work (Will Evangelicalism Survive Its Own Popularity? [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1980], 20-25). Mark Ellingsen includes as an additional characteristic the notion that Evangelicals are those who explicitly identify themselves as such (The Evangelical Movement, 47-48). Alister McGrath’s list is the same as mine except that he adds the Lordship of the Holy Spirit (Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity [Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1995], 56). ↑

4. Published biblical scholars with a process orientation include William Beardslee, Ronald Farmer, Terrence Fretheim, Robert Gnuse, David Lull, Russell Pregeant. See also Lewis Ford’s, The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978). ↑

5. Ronald Nash, “Process Theology and Classical Theism,” in Process Theology, Ronald Nash, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987). “Panentheism” is a conception of the God-world relationship adopted by many process theologians in which God has always and necessarily been related to some world or another. ↑

6. Of course, this raises the question, “What are the core notions of Process theology?” If David Ray Griffin’s list of ten core notions of Process philosophy were presupposed, however, there is no essential disagreement between Evangelicals and Process theology on this point. Furthermore, one could claim that Christian Scripture is a source that emerged thanks to what Griffin calls a high degree of “variable divine influence” (Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001], 5-7. See especially core notion seven.) ↑

7. For guides to ways in which biblical scholars with a Process orientation address issues of hermeneutics, see Ronald L. Farmer, Beyond the Impasse: The Promise of a Process Hermeneutic, Studies in American Biblical Hermeneutics, no. 13 (Macon, Ga: Mercer University Press, 1997) and Terrence Fretheim’s half of the book he co-wrote with Karlfried Froehlich, The Bible as Word of God In a Postmodern Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). ↑

8. Among Evangelical works that might be labeled “inclusivist” because they affirm the possibility of salvation for the unevangelized, see Clark H. Pinnock, “An Inclusivist View” in More Than One Way?, eds. Dennis Okholm and Timothy Phillips (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995), and A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992); Randy L. Maddox, “Wesley and the Question of Truth or Salvation Through Other Religions,” Wesleyan Theological Journal (Spring/Fall 1992), 7-29; John Sanders, No Other Name: An Investigation Into the Destiny of the Unevangelized (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992); Amos Yong, “Whither Theological Inclusivism? The Development and Critique of an Evangelical Theology of Religions,” The Evangelical Quarterly 71:4 (October 1999), 327-48. ↑

9. For a discussion of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, see Mark Grear Mann, “The Challenge of Religious Pluralism,” in Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays, Thomas Jay Oord, ed. (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2003). ↑

10. David Ray Griffin argues this way in his work, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, 246. ↑

11. For a discussion of how a Process conception of nonsensory perception might be helpful for the Evangelical Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace, see Thomas Jay Oord, “A Postmodern Wesleyan Philosophy and David Ray Griffin’s Postmodern Vision.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 35:1 (April/May, 2000), and “Prevenient Grace and Nonsensory Perception of God in a Postmodern Wesleyan Philosophy,” in Between Nature and Grace: Mapping the Interface of Wesleyan Theology and Psychology (San Diego, Calif.: Point Loma Press, 2000). ↑

12. For Evangelical criticisms of Process thought, see Ronald Nash’s edited volume, Process Theology. For a criticism of Evangelicalism by one sympathetic to Process thought, see Nicholas F. Gier, God, Reason, and the Evangelicals (Lantham: University Press of America, 1987). ↑

13. See, for instance, Bryan P. Stone and Thomas Jay Oord, eds., Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2001). John Culp was one of the first Evangelicals to consider positively how Process resources may be helpful to Evangelicals (“A Dialogue with the Process Theology of John B. Cobb, Jr.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 17 [Fall 1980]: 33-44). ↑

14. The label, “openness of God,” was first presented in the title of Richard Rice’s Open theism book: The Openness of God (Nashville, Tenn.: Review and Herald, 1980). Donald Wayne Viney has noted that Charles Hartshorne wrote of God’s openness in several publications, but Hartshorne apparently never used the phrase “openness of God.” ↑

15. The book is divided into five sections, each written by separate authors. Richard Rice provides the “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” John Sanders addresses Christian tradition in “Historical Considerations,” Clark H. Pinnock addresses the view as “Systematic Theology,” William Hasker provides “A Philosophical Perspective,” and David Basinger suggests some “Practical Implications” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, Clark H. Pinnock, et al. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994). ↑

16. Among Openness books that are particularly noteworthy are the following: Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001), Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001), Richard Rice, God’s Foreknowledge and Man’s Free Will (Bethany, 1984), and John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1998). ↑

17. Two especially important conferences involved Open and Process theists in face-to-face dialogue. The first, “The Enlightenment in Evangelical and Process Perspectives,” was held in 1997, and the second, an Evangelical subsection of the International Whitehead Conference of 1998, produced a variety of fruit, not the least of which is a collection of five essays titled, Searching for An Adequate God: A Dialogue Between Process and Free Will Theists (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000). ↑

18. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 118. ↑

19. Ibid. ↑

20. Ibid., 101. ↑

21. Cobb, John B. Jr. “Evangelical Theology in Process Perspective.” Unpublished manuscript presented at The Enlightenment in Evangelical and Process Perspectives conference, Claremont, California, 20-22 March 1997. Manuscript available at the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, California. ↑

22. This emphasis upon divine love is the overriding theme in a book by Wesleyans in dialogue with Process thought titled, Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love, Bryan P. Stone and Thomas Jay Oord, Eds. It also is the central theme in my forthcoming book, An Essentially Loving God: An Open and Relational Theology of Love. ↑

23. Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in The Openness of God, 15. ↑

24. Ibid., 18. ↑

25. Ibid., 21. ↑

26. Ibid., 19. ↑

27. Richard Rice, “Process Theism and the Open View of God: The Crucial Difference,” in Searching for an Adequate God, 183-184. ↑

28. Pinnock, et al., “Preface,” The Openness of God, 7. ↑

29. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God, 103. ↑

30. Pinnock briefly documents this turmoil in the introductory chapter of Most Moved Mover. For a monograph-length explication of Pinnock’s theological journey, including summaries of some theological tussles, see Barry L. Callen, Clark H. Pinnock: Journey toward Renewal, An Intellectual Biography (Nappanee, Ind.: Evangel, 2000). ↑

31. Clark H. Pinnock, “Between Classical and Process Theism,” in Process Theology, Ronald Nash, ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1987), 325. ↑

32. Gregory A. Boyd presents a very accessible book-length defense of Open theism’s denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge in God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001). Christopher Hall and John Sanders debate the issue in Christianity Today, “Does God Know Your Next Move?” 45:7 (2001):39-45; 45:8 (2001):50-56. ↑

33. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” Openness of God, 120. ↑

34. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 142-43. For an illuminating discussion of Open and Process theism, see Donald Wayne Viney, “The Varieties of Theism and the Openness of God: Charles Hartshorne and Free-Will Theism,” in The Personalist Forum 14/2 (Fall 1998): 199-238. ↑

35. Ibid., 141. ↑

36. Stephen T. Franklin is an Evangelical who knows Process thought very well and works toward the mutual transformation of Process and Evangelical theisms. Franklin’s major work to date is Speaking from the Depths: Alfred North Whitehead’s Hermeneutical Metaphysics of Propositions, Experience, Symbolism, Language, and Religion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990). ↑

37. Ibid., 145. ↑

38. Rice in Searching for an Adequate God, 185. ↑

39. Michael E. Lodahl provides a chapter-length discussion of what is at stake in creatio ex nihilo in his essay, “Creation Out of Nothing? Or is Next to Nothing Good Enough?” in Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love, chapter nine. Amos Yong is a Pentecostal theologian whose work addresses the value of Process theology for Pentecostal thought. See his exploration of doctrines of creation, “Possibility and Actuality: The Doctrine of Creation and Its Implications for Divine Omniscience,” The Wesleyan Philosophical Society Online Journal [http://david.snu.edu/~brint.fs/wpsjnl/v1n1.htm] 1:1 (2001). ↑

40. Lewis S. Ford has written numerous reviews and articles on the Evangelical-Process dialogue in a variety of journals. One of his best essays is his review of The Openness of God: “Evangelical Appraisals of Process Theism,” Christian Scholars Review 20:2 (December 1990): 149-63. ↑

41. David Ray Griffin, “Creation and the Problem of Evil,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy: A New Edition, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 115. Griffin offers a sustained discussion of creatio ex nihilo in this chapter. See also Catherine Keller’s book-length rejection of creatio ex nihilo: Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003). ↑

42. I also make this point in my essay, “A Process Wesleyan Theodicy: Freedom, Embodiment, and the Almighty God,” in Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love, chapter eight, and in “Divine Power and Love: An Evangelical Process Proposal.” Koinonia: The Princeton Theological Seminary Graduate Forum. X.1 (Spring 1998): 1-18. ↑

43. Pinnock acknowledges, “Genesis 1 does not itself teach ex nihilo creation but presents God as imposing order on chaos . . .” (Most Moved Mover, 146). Rather than follow Process thought by speculating that God created from chaotic nondivine entities, however, Pinnock speculates that the chaos of Genesis refers to God’s warfare with “rebellious angels” (ibid). Although Pinnock likely does not intend this, one might interpret this second speculative move to support the argument that God always faces forces over which God cannot exert total control. For an Open argument concerning the possibility of demonic warfare, see Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997). ↑

44. Basinger, “Practical Implications,” in The Openness of God, 156. See also Basinger’s influential work, Divine Power in Process Theism: A Philosophical Critique (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988). ↑

45. Most Moved Mover, 147. ↑

46. Ibid., 148. ↑

47. Griffin, “Process Theology and the Christian Good News: A Response to Classical Free Will Theism.” Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists. John B. Cobb, Jr., and Clark H. Pinnock, eds. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 30. ↑

48. Ibid., 36-38. ↑

49. Ibid., 23. ↑

50. Ibid., 17. ↑

51. Cobb, “Introduction,” Searching for an Adequate God, xiii. ↑

52. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 145. Gregory Boyd provides a lengthy argument for why the Trinity provides a better relational metaphysics than a Process hypothesis in Trinity and Process: A Critical Evaluation and Reconstruction of Hartshorne’s Di-Polar Theism Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics (New York: Peter Lang, 1992). ↑

53. I discuss these issues in detail in chapter eight of my manuscript, An Essentially Loving God (forthcoming). ↑

54. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 145. ↑

55. Rice, “Biblical Support” in The Openness of God, 48. ↑

56. I develop this issue in my manuscript, An Essentially Loving God (forthcoming). ↑

Christians typically claim that God is active in the world. God’s activity is evident in the beauty and diversity of the natural world. Christians witness to an active God when they observe acts of kindness and generosity, see a mother loving her child, or witness care for the destitute, impoverished, and dying. Major social events like the end of apartheid or the demolition of the Berlin Wall are occasions during which many Christians say that God was especially active. Various people are particularly revelatory of God action. We often call them “saints.” And Christians typically witness to their belief that God was active in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. John Wesley’s theology is replete with claims about God being active in these several kinds of ways.^[2]

These events and creaturely activities are also the domain of scientific investigation. In the last centuries, even the life, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ have been subjected to scientific scrutiny. A variety of questions arise when considering the relationship between scientific inquiry and theology. Perhaps no set of questions is more complex than the set accounting for God’s action in the world. We wonder: What does God actually do in our lives and in the world around us? What should we mean when we say God creates, designs, sustains, and redeems the universe? Can science tell us anything about divine action?^[3] Can God’s activity be tested by science? Or are we better off allowing science to give one set of answers, theology another set, and appealing to mystery when the two disagree?

John Wesley himself was very interested in science and how scientific theory and data might influence theology.^[4] This essay offers a new response, a new paradigm, for thinking about divine action in relation to science. I propose that a particular view of divine love overcomes central methodological and metaphysical conflicts in the science-and-theology dialogue. These conflicts are serious ones, and failure to resolve them only perpetuates confusion. Confusion ultimately undermines the urgency for righteous and holy living. I will argue that a particular view of divine love accounts for divine causation and supports vital commitments in both theology and science.

My appeal to love as the new paradigm is not a way of asking, “Can’t we all just get along?” Love does not function as a way of asking theologians and scientists to be gracious and kind to one another. While I hope that those involved in these discussions conduct themselves in loving ways, this essay proposes that a particular understanding of love solves central methodological and metaphysical conflicts.

Method and Metaphysics

Most conflicts pertaining to God’s action emerge from methodological and metaphysical assumptions--the methods of science and the assumed metaphysical nature of God’s causal activity. Many people assume that claims about divine causation are irrelevant to science and its methodologies. This view, often called methodological naturalism, is understandable for at least two reasons. Because of these two reasons, scientists, both Christians and non-Christians, often do not refer to God’s activity in their scientific theories and explanations.

First, scientists are justifiably nervous when theists give supposedly full and sufficient theological explanations for events and things in nature. This nervousness is due in large part to the wide-ranging authority over science that the church once maintained and the assumed sufficient nature of theological claims. Some scientific theories thought to oppose official church positions were once deemed unacceptable by ecclesial leaders.^[5]

Many scientists today consequently resist theories that require or seem to imply that science should assume a subordinate position to the authoritative claims of theology and the church. Contemporary science resists the notion that theology gives full and sufficient explanations for events and things in the natural world. For many scientists, in fact, theology is irrelevant.^[6] No doubt, this resistance to or apathy toward theology motivates some who oppose the Intelligent Design movement, a movement that in recent years has gained power in the public arena but remains almost entirely absent in academia.^[7]

A second reason why God’s activity has been assumed to reside outside the domain of science has, unfortunately, received much less attention. Theologians of various types, especially Christian theologians, have affirmed that God’s constitution is spiritual: “God is spirit,” says Jesus, “and we worship him in spirit and truth.” Insofar as spirits cannot be perceived by our five senses, it makes little sense to think that an empirical method based upon sensory perception could detect divine activity.^[8] God’s spiritual constitution suggests that science is not capable of describing God’s direct causal action.

Due mainly to these two assumptions, many scientists, even scientists with Christian beliefs about God being creator, designer, sustainer, and redeemer, assume a form of methodological naturalism for their scientific work. Methodological naturalism says that scientific research, theories, and explanations should not refer in any way to God’s activity. Methodological naturalism allows scientists who are Christians to do and think about scientific work in the same way as atheistic scientists.

When asked about the ultimate explanation of things, scientists with Christian commitments are likely to mention God’s activity. Some distinguish between the order of nature, which science can explain without reference to divine causation, and the order of grace, which appeals to the mystery of faith or to special revelation. By following this practice, these Christians affirm methodological naturalism while denying metaphysical naturalism (where metaphysical naturalism amounts to atheism).

The dual affirmation of methodological naturalism and metaphysical supernaturalism intensifies the temptation to view science and theology as separate and autonomous domains. Theologians such as Langdon Gilkey and Rudolf Bultmann represent this perspective. They generally consider science and theology as two independent modes of inquiry.^[9] Narrative theologians in the Wittgensteinian tradition, such as George Lindbeck, typically consider science and theology to possess separate and independent language systems, with their separate forms of life.^[10] Biologist Stephen Jay Gould calls science and religion two non-overlapping magesteria. Religion is concerned with meaning and values, says Gould, while science deals with the facts and physical existence.^[11]

A growing number of scholars, however, criticize the view that science and theology can be neatly separated.^[12] I share this criticism. Many Christians reject the view that theology is unconcerned about facts and the physical world. Theology is concerned with the real world, in all its dimensions.^[13] And it has become increasingly clear that science is value-laden and has important implications for morality. Reality cannot easily be divided into neat little compartments, some religious/spiritual/moral and others scientific/factual/physical. One critic of the independent view, Ian Barbour, says, “We cannot remain content with a plurality of unrelated languages if they are languages about the same world. If we seek a coherent interpretation of all experience, we cannot avoid the search for a unified worldview.”^[14] I share with Barbour this quest for a unified worldview.

Many Christians worry that methodological naturalism is de facto metaphysical naturalism. Assigning God no causal role in scientific explanations easily eliminates God from playing any meaningful role. The idea of God becomes an unnecessary addition to what can apparently be explained by natural causes alone. John Wesley’s worry that Christians are “practical atheists” when they act as if God does not exist, even if they cognitively affirm God’s existence, is a worry that seems to apply here.^[15]

The loudest voices claiming that methodological naturalism is de facto metaphysical naturalism are found in the Intelligent Design movement. A quick look at the movement’s key voices reveals their worry that science, especially as it affirms one form of evolution and affords no role for an intelligent designer, supports a form of metaphysical naturalism leading to atheism.^[16]

But philosophers and theologians of diverse persuasions, such as Philip Clayton, David Ray Griffin, John Milbank, and Alvin Plantinga, also worry that methodological naturalism affords God no real explanatory or causal role in the world.^[17] Research on human interaction, especially religious experience, seems especially undermined when scientists assume methodological naturalism. It fails to answer our fundamental questions about God’s activity. It can easily be interpreted as providing sufficient answers to the phenomena of our world, despite lacking any reference to God.^[18]

Christians who want scientific methodologies to include a legitimate place for divine causation, both methodologically and metaphysically, have a series of theological options from which to choose. I identify below eight such options. They do not exhaust all of the possible ways of thinking about God’s causal activity, but they do cover the most important options.

1. 1. Incessant Divine Coercion. This way of thinking about scientific method and divine action views God as the sole cause of every event or thing. Humans may think that created entities have a natural cause. They may think that self-determination or freedom exists such that at least some creatures report exerting genuine causal activity. But God is actually the hidden, unilateral cause of all things. Some forms of Calvinist theology either explicitly affirm or imply this view of God’s action.
   2. Frequent Divine Coercion. God completely controls the vast majority of events and things in the universe. But occasionally, God grants freedom to humans for genuine self-causation. Christians who want to make a strong split between occasionally free humans and entirely determined nonhumans typically presuppose this scheme. It also seems to fit a form of popular theology that describes a God who remains in control and yet, out of a desire for relationship, occasionally gives freedom to humans.^[19]
   3. Accidental Freewill Theism. The difference between the Frequent Divine Coercion and Accidental Freewill Theism is a difference of degree, not kind. The accidental freewill theist may assume that many creatures have a measure of God-given freedom and causality. She may believe that chance events occur and that God typically works in and with creation without trumping creaturely agency. But accidental freewill theists also claim that God could withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom to creatures. Some accidental freewill theists say that God occasionally controls others completely to perform miracles. Others in this camp say that God could but never does withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom. They argue that God voluntarily became self-restrained at the creation of our universe. I think most Wesleyan theologians are accidental freewill theists.^[20]
   4. Essential Freewill Theism/Essential Kenosis. This view says that God necessarily provides freedom to creatures and calls them to cooperate. God is personal, and God empowers, inspires, and calls creation to love. Creatures are utterly dependent upon God, but God cannot withdraw, fail to offer, or override the freedom God necessarily gives. Giving freedom to others is one aspect of the love part of God’s essential nature. Because God is love, God must give freedom. But the efficacy and form of God’s causal activity oscillates, in the sense that divine causation varies from event to event, depending on the circumstances and the creaturely responses. I will return to this scheme, because I prefer it to others.
   5. Steady-State Divine Influence. The basic difference between schemes four and five is the issue of oscillation in God’s causal activity. Steady-State Divine Influence says that God necessarily provides freedom to and cooperates with creatures. But this fifth scheme says that God’s causal activity remains in all ways constant with regard to influence on creatures. God may be called the Ground of Being or a Holy Reality. God is not personal, in the typical sense of personal giving and receiving in relationship. As such, God’s permeating influence is unchanging in content and character. Prominent theologians who understand divine action in the steady state sense would include Paul Tillich and process theologians like Henry Nelson Wieman.^[21]
   6. Natural and Supernatural Action. This scheme has many versions. Perhaps the most common says that there are some events that can be entirely explained by creaturely action. The causes of these events are natural. Other events, sometimes called “miracles,” are acts of God alone. Such miracles are divine interventions. A third category has both divine and creaturely causes. Some forms of the Natural/Supernatural scheme propose a primary and secondary scheme whereby God sometimes acts as the primary or direct cause but often as a secondary or indirect cause. It remains difficult, however, to determine the nature of divine action when God functions as a secondary or indirect cause in this scheme. And it becomes difficult to determine when it is that God acts alone, when God and creatures cooperate, or when natural causes are all determining. The Natural/Supernatural scheme resides at the heart of much confusion about the relationship between science and theology. A theologian who understands divine action in this way is M. C. D’Arcy.^[22]
   7. Deism. The deistic scheme suggests that God initially used coercion to create the universe ex nihilo and set its fundamental laws. But after this initial burst, God has left the world alone to follow God-designed laws. Although we would not find any evidence of divine action occurring in the present, we hypothesize that divine action was required at the beginning. The regularity of the laws, the fine-tuning required, and the exquisite design of the universe suggest a Creator. Deism supports the “God at a distance” approach to theology that John Wesley strongly rejected.^[23]
   8. Mysterious Divine Action. Mystery should always play some role in every discussion of how God acts in the world. This final scheme, however, assumes that God’s activity is absolutely mysterious. God’s action is entirely unlike creaturely action, and God’s ways are utterly incomprehensible. This option assumes a complete via negativa. Proponents may argue that God exerts real influence in the world, but they simultaneously claim that we cannot know anything about what that influence is like. This option is tempting to a variety of theologians who wish to protect theology from becoming an enterprise in anthropology or politics. Those who want to allow space for theology in an age dominated by science also find it attractive.

We might compare these eight options in several ways. One of the more interesting compares them in relation to our interest in scientific methodology. Do one or more options help us make a judgment about divine causality? Which of these eight provides a theoretical basis for testing divine action?

Below are four options from the eight above that at least allow us to test divine action in the world. All four share the view that God at least sometimes provides free agency to creatures and, therefore, seeks cooperation. Each of these schemes supports, in one way or another, the view that both God and creatures exert causal influence. Notice that testability requires some variability of God’s action in relation to creaturely action. Theologies not conducive to testing are those in which God (1) controls everything, or (2) always acts in the same way, or (3) has no current active role, or (4) acts in incomprehensible ways. Those conducive to testing are four of the above eight models: Frequent Divine Coercion, Accidental Freewill Theism, Essential Free Theism/Essential Kenosis, and Natural and Supernatural Action.

A question mark goes with two of these four options. Frequent Divine Action has a question mark because it suggests that God is generally the sole cause of events. Only occasionally would events occur that included a measure of non-divine causation. A question mark has been placed here because I know of no clear scheme to distinguish which events result from God’s absolute determination and which events do not. This inability to distinguish makes it difficult to gauge which events should be credited to divine causation and which are the product of divine and creaturely causes.

A question mark has also been added to the Natural and Supernatural Action option. In that scheme, some events or things result entirely from creaturely causation and others result entirely from divine causation. The ones occurring without direct divine causation would, of course, not be capable of testing for divine activity, at least direct divine causation. Theologians should rightfully reject the increasingly popular idea that some event might occur without God’s causal activity.

Championing Love in Scientific Method and Metaphysics

Which of the options best fits with the central Christian claim that God is love? The answer would be important to theological traditions that affirm love as God’s supreme or reigning attribute.^[24] It would appeal to Wesleyans who typically believe that the sentence “God is love” resides at the heart of the Christian revelation of God.^[25] It was Wesley who called love God’s “reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all [God’s] other perfections.”^[26] The theological vision of divine action that best champions divine love would likely be most persuasive to those who believe that love always and necessarily characterizes God’s causal activity.^[27]

What if we also affirmed the widespread intuition that love never coerces? Coercion and love are antithetical. Empirical evidence seems to support the view that love is never coercive, insofar as coercion is defined as completely controlling others. If God’s nature is love, it would seem to follow that God’s causal activity would never be coercive. In fact, the God whose essential nature is love would seem incapable of coercion. Divine causal coercion would mean that God withdraws, overrides, or fails to offer freedom to others and thereby controls them entirely. I argue that God cannot do this. Rejecting divine coercion does not entail that God fails to exert force. I think God exerts force on everything, which is part of what it means to say that God exerts causation. God exerts force as the most powerful being that exists. God is almighty, in the sense of being the mightiest being that exists and in the sense of exerting that might in some way upon all others. But God always exerts power in love, and God’s power never entirely controls others. By virtue of God’s nature as a loving Spirit, God cannot coerce.

Creatures are not free to do just anything, however. Here, Augustine was right to object to the view that creatures are entirely autonomous and completely free agents. Creaturely freedom is limited. Both theology and science suggest this. Theologians have noted the important effects that sin and environment have on limiting the range of creaturely freedom. And scientists speak about the genetic, biological, neurological, embodiment, and social constraints to freedom.^[28] But limited freedom is freedom nonetheless! Wesleyans are right to emphasize our tradition’s denial of predestination and it ancillary notions. Wesleyans are right to affirm that prevenient grace provides creatures the conditions for free response.^[29]

If we deny that God ever coerces, because God always loves, one option remains from the four potentially testable schemes. I label this option Essential Freewill Theism or Essential Kenosis. For the rest of this article, I will use the term “Essential Kenosis.” Doing so is not only convenient, but “Kenosis” better emphasizes the Wesleyan notion of prevenient grace, whereby God acts first to give the gift of God-self to others.

Essential Kenosis

Essential Kenosis avers that God’s essential nature is love, and God necessarily gives freedom and/or agency to others. Because God’s nature includes freedom-giving love, God cannot withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom/agency to others. Creatures are essentially free, although that freedom is limited. To use the language of the apostle Paul, “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17).

My proposal shares affinities with how Randy Maddox talks about John Wesley’s understanding of divine power in relation to divine love. Maddox suggests that “perhaps the best way to capture Wesley’s conviction . . . is to say that he construed God’s power or sovereignty fundamentally in terms of empowerment rather than control or overpowerment. This is not to weaken God’s power but to determine its character! As Wesley was fond of saying, God works ‘strongly and sweetly’.”^[30]

Sometimes, creatures use their God-given freedom and/or agency badly. Evil is the result of this misuse. Essential Kenosis clears God from any legitimate charge of culpability for causing or failing to prevent evil, injustice, and debilitating confusion that creatures or conditions of existence cause. God is not to blame for the genuine evil of the world.

The Essential Kenosis view of God’s love and causal activity has the benefit of solving the theoretical aspect of the problem of evil.^[31] This view also resolves the question of why a loving God would not see to the fair distribution of goods to the poor and needy. It solves the problem of why a loving God would allow an errant and ambiguous revelation of information that this God apparently deems necessary for full salvation. Essential Kenosis solves the theoretical aspects of all these problems and more by claiming that God cannot withdraw, override, or fail to offer freedom and/or agency to creatures, and creatures sometimes use that God-given freedom badly. Essential Kenosis offers a conceptual scheme that clears God from being culpable for causing or failing to prevent evil, injustice, and debilitating confusion.

Essential Kenosis provides a new paradigm for thinking about divine action in relation to science. This new paradigm, with its particular view of divine love, overcomes many key metaphysical and methodological conflicts that arise in the science-and-theology dialogue. To support my argument that Essential Kenosis may be a helpful paradigm for thinking about divine action in relation to science, I outline what this view entails. Essential Kenosis proposes the following.

1. No creaturely event or thing is entirely caused by God. God cannot coerce. Because no creaturely event or thing is entirely caused by God, divine causation should never be considered the full or sufficient explanation for any particular event. This statement overcomes the fear that theology or the church makes science unnecessary. The rejection of methodological and metaphysical supernatural sufficiency means that science should always play an explanatory role in our attempts to make sense of existence in general and any event or thing in particular.

To say that God never unilaterally determines any event or thing also means that attempts to wed science and theology by selecting particular events as explainable only by divine design are unwarranted. For instance, Essential Kenosis rejects intelligent design claims that the irreducible complexity of any particular molecular structure is best explained as the work of God alone. God never designs unilaterally, which means that all complex organisms emerge from both divine and creaturely causes. The argument that creatures or natural forces play no role in evolution in general or the emergence of anything in particular runs contrary to Essential Kenosis.

2. Creatures and/or non-divine forces never entirely cause events. Creatures cannot coerce. Because creatures or non-divine forces cannot unilaterally determine any event or thing, creaturely causation should never be considered a sufficient explanation. Methodological and metaphysical naturalism are rejected. Any attempt to explain fully a particular event by reference to natural causes alone is inadequate. Creaturely causal closure does not exist. Instead, God exerts causal influence, but never complete control, on all existents whatsoever. God’s causal activity is all-pervasive.

John Wesley was especially insistent that God’s causal activity pervades all things. He argued, “God is in all things, and . . . we are to see the Creator in the glass of every creature.” He insisted that we “should use and look upon nothing as separate from God.” God “pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is in a true sense the soul of the universe.”^[32]

To say that creatures never entirely cause any event or thing because God always plays a causal role is also, obviously, to deny metaphysical atheism. According to my proposal, any claim that science provides a full and sufficient explanation of any particular event without reference to divine action is unjustified. Of course, some explanations may require more appeal to divine action than others because of the complexity of the organisms involved and the degree of value that pertains. Contrary to the arguments of some well-known apologists for scientism, Essential Kenosis argues that divine causation is necessary for every event or thing.

Every event or thing emerges through the causation of both divine and non-divine causes. This consistency of combination causes overcomes the conceptual problems in the Natural and Supernatural Action option, as well as similar conceptual problems in the other theological options. Most other options either require or allow God to be the sole cause of some events. Or they allow for the possibility that creatures act as sole causes for some events. Essential Kenosis insists that God is a necessary cause in the evolution and continued existence of all things.

3. The efficacy of God’s causal activity oscillates. While every event has both divine and creaturely causes, Essential Kenosis proposes that God’s causal efficacy varies from event to event. Divine causation oscillates in the sense that God’s will is more or less expressed as creatures respond well or poorly to God’s freedom-providing activity.^[33] God’s activity is most clearly expressed when an event profoundly promotes overall well-being. God’s activity is less clearly expressed when an event profoundly undercuts overall well-being. In other words, the presence or absence of creaturely love indicates the degree to which God is active. When well-being is undermined in any particular event, God’s purposes are not accomplished. And yet God exerts some causal influence on even those who do not love or do not respond well to God’s calling.

It is important to note that the oscillation of divine causation is not a function of the divine will. To say that divine causation oscillates does not mean that God chooses sometimes to be more influential and other times to remain relatively uninfluential. Instead, God’s nature as love prompts God to exert the most influence possible in any situation. To use an engine metaphor, God always runs at full throttle. Divine oscillation occurs as creatures cooperate in greater or lesser degrees.^[34]

It is also important to note that God’s causal activity does not oscillate arbitrarily. One disadvantage of the word “oscillate” is that it connotes to some an arbitrary and periodic increase or decrease. I do not intend this connotation. Rather, God’s causal oscillation depends on the choices God and others make and upon the conditions and features of any particular situation. Divine oscillation is not random.

The claim that God’s causal activity oscillates is particularly important for Christians doing research on love and who think that God is the source of dramatic events, signs, and wonders. Essential Kenosis accounts for dramatic events by claiming that God’s causal activity is especially effective during those times. And yet, the scheme does not claim that God is the sole cause of such events. God can do and does new things, and God’s activity is profoundly revealed when creation conforms to the lure of divine love. The theory of divine oscillation should be helpful for those who want to point to particular events as especially revelatory of divine action. These events are rightly called “miracles.”

4. God’s causal activity is diverse. God’s causal activity varies in form as God lovingly offers opportunities to each creature relevant to that creature’s situation and potential. How God loves a worm will be different from God’s love for an eagle. God’s love for bacteria differs from God’s love for people. The form of God’s causation varies depending on the diversity of the situations and opportunities.

The fact that God loves all creation is unwavering and uniform; God seeks overall well-being. But how God chooses to love each creature, in each situation, at each moment, varies. How God loves is pluriform. The diversity of the form of divine causation is possible in part because of God’s omnipresence. But God’s diverse causal activity also hinges upon the diversity of the creatures with which God relates. Diverse causation arises from God’s own varying plans and desires. God’s causal diversity emerges from the diverse relations and communities that influence each creature. And God’s diverse causation depends upon what possibilities for the future are genuinely available in the present moment. The diversity of the divine vision and the diversity of creation result in diversity of God’s causal activity.

5. Love always characterizes God’s causal activity. Essential Kenosis understands divine love in a particular way. We need to explore this particularity. I define love as acting intentionally, in sympathetic (or “empathetic”) response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. Love requires free and intentional agents who exist in relationship with others, especially in relationship with God, and love is concerned with promoting the common good. To use the language of St. John, “We love because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19). This definition of love applies both to creatures and to God, although only God expresses love necessarily.^[35]

Love is a deliberate, free, and motive-laden activity, expressed in response to one’s community of others that includes God, other agents, and one’s own past actions. Love aims to promote overall well-being. By promoting overall well-being, I mean enhancing the kind of quality of life, health, happiness, wholeness, and flourishing that is well expressed in the Hebrew word shalom, the biblical word “blessedness,” and the abundant life Jesus said he came to offer.^[36] The insertion of the word “overall” reminds us of the social justice aspect present in love. Heaping benefits on the few at the obvious detriment to the whole is unjust and therefore not loving.

Wesleyans are prone to regard love as God’s chief attribute or super-essential characteristic. All divine acts have been, are, and will be acts of love.^[37] God cannot not love.^[38] Divine causation always endeavors to promote overall well-being.

Although love is God’s essence, God freely chooses how best to love each creature in each situation. God is not free not to love because love is God’s nature. But God is free to decide how to love. As a personal being, God freely chooses some ways instead of others as God loves creation.^[39] As essentially kenotic, God lovingly empowers and inspires others by providing them freedom in relationship. Because God’s nature is love, God cannot withdraw, fail to offer, or veto the freedom God provides to all creatures capable of acting intentionally. God can be counted on to love relentlessly, because, as Charles Wesley put it, God’s nature and name is love.^[40]

Testing Divine Love

We are ready to see what this new paradigm means for scientific method. I want to focus on one of two main areas of research that the Essential Kenosis research program illumines.

The first area is the scientific testing of divine action. We’ve seen that many of the options examined earlier require or allow divine coercion. God’s alleged capacity to coerce makes those options inherently difficult if not impossible for testing divine action. But the Essential Kenosis scheme, which requires both divine and creaturely causation for any creaturely event and suggests that God’s causal activity is diverse and oscillates in effectiveness, provides a uniform theory for testing divine action.

If, as the Essential Kenosis option presupposes, God is a necessary cause in every event, scientific testing will not determine if God acts as a cause. God always plays some causal role. Essential Kenosis affirms the words of the Apostle Paul that “In all things, God works for the good with those who love him” (Rm 8:28, RSV). The scheme does suggest a research program, to use the language of Imre Lakatos,^[41] that presupposes a particular view of divine causation while rejecting the view that God is ever causally absent or inactive. Testing cannot gauge whether or not God acts in the world. God always acts, and in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Essential kenosis allows for testing the degree to which divine causation is effective. Divine causation is more effective in one or some events compared with others. This level of effectiveness can be tested. Such testing does not involve putting events or things under a microscope in the attempt to see more or less of God. As spirit, God’s actions are not discernible by our five senses. Testing to gauge whether God’s causal activity is more effective in some events compared to others requires a different measuring stick.

The general measurement most helpful for gauging divine action is the measurement of love. That is, divine causation is most evident in those events or things that express love, in the sense of promoting overall well-being. Divine causation is less effective and therefore God’s causal efficacy is less observable in those events or things that undermine overall well-being. In short, testing divine action in the world directly relates to the promotion of what the Hebrew prophets called “shalom” and Jesus called “abundant life” (Jn. 10:10) The extent to which an event promotes overall well-being reveals the extent to which God’s causal activity is effective.

I foresee several possible objections to love as the criterion for scientific testability of divine action. I answer these objections in hope that the plausibility and fecundity of this research program may be more apparent. While answering these objections, the contours of my proposed research program, with its methodology and metaphysics of love, should become clearer.

Objection #1: Assumes the existence of God. First, some may object to the whole enterprise of testing divine action on the ground that Essential Kenosis assumes the existence of God and then promptly moves to test how God acts in the world. These critics would like prior proof of God’s existence before trying to test divine action.

Response: Yes, I assume that God exists. But all scientific research programs make assumptions. A number of strong arguments for God’s existence suggest to me and many others that it is more plausible to assume that God exists than not. I know of no absolute proof; faith always plays a role in the believer’s claim about God.

Any adequate research program contains hard-core presuppositions that researchers accept upfront as reasonable, although perhaps not capable of proving. For instance, the vast majority if not all scientific research programs assume some view of cause and effect. But proving cause and effect is, as David Hume pointed out, inherently impossible.^[42] And the vast majority if not all scientific research programs assume value-laden criteria to claim that some explanations are better than others (e.g., some explanations are more simple, more elegant, more comprehensive). Proving values and aesthetics is also inherently difficult if not impossible.

Those searching for the most adequate research program should compare the relative superiority of one program to another based upon how each accounts for what seems important facets and facts of existence. We are likely willing to accept one research program as superior if that program accounts well for what we know best. The Essential Kenosis methodology I propose accounts for existence better than a naturalistic or atheistic methodology. Here I agree with my philosophy colleague, Joseph Bankard, that the best overall explanation for existence in general and morals in particular is an explanation that includes the presence and activity of God.^[43]

My proposal takes seriously the widespread accounts of religious experience, including claims about God’s working in human lives and in creation. Claims about divine action based on religious experience are non-negotiable to many Christians, even if Christians may not affirm all religious claims.^[44] Furthermore, the Essential Kenosis program does a better job than most for accounting for love in general and the view that love is not coercive in particular. Accordingly, this program seems potentially more fruitful for love research than others.

Objection #2: This research program does not offer certainty. Some may object to the criterion of love as the ultimate measurement for divine action because the efficacy of divine love cannot be deduced with certainty from observed phenomena. “God” and “love” cannot be perceived by our five senses. They evade certitude.

Response: Neither science nor theology offers absolute certainty. The Essential Kenosis research program does not support claims of absolute certainty. At its best, however, contemporary science also does not claim to have obtained absolute certainty. Essential Kenosis does support scientific practices that are central to the scientific enterprise such as induction and inference. It supports the scientific practice of moving from observed data to a hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis by further observation. Simultaneously, it reminds us that science, relying as it does on fallible sensory perception, does not provide grounds for absolute certainty. Science deals in the provisional, not the absolutely provable. Theology does as well. We all live by faith.

Objection #3: It is impossible to measure overall well-being. Some may object to the criterion of love as the ultimate measurement for testing divine action, because this criterion requires an assessment of nearly everything. That is, if love means promoting overall well-being, the critic might wonder how one could do such all-embracing measuring.

Response: Like other scientific research, the Essential Kenosis program examines limited samples and generalizes to the whole. All-inclusive measuring is not possible for localized creatures, but this should not prevent researchers from speculating about the whole based upon observations and experiments from a limited set. In fact, this speculation is a bedrock practice of science. Researchers examine the few and make provisional claims about what this means for the whole.

Likewise, while love intends to promote overall well-being, it must assess what might be done to promote the global good when acting locally. Insofar as an intentional response to promote well-being is helpful to some, and not an obvious determinant to the whole, it can provisionally be deemed an act of love. Researchers need not measure all things when speculating about how overall well-being is promoted.

Of course, we not only find it impossible to measure overall well-being, but we also recognize that differences can arise as to which courses of action best promote overall well-being. Diverse people in diverse cultures have diverse ideas about how best to promote the common good. This healthy diversity of views can, of course, lead to epistemic problems. We should remember that we can hold different views about the details of what constitutes the greatest well-being without thinking that embracing this diversity necessarily entails embracing radical epistemic relativism. Here, the Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace can once again be helpful, insofar as we want to claim that human moral intuitions have their basis in God’s love as revealed to our hearts and minds, even if that revelation can be misunderstood and partially ambiguous.

Objection #4: Testing divine causal action requires research on creaturely causal action. Some may object to Essential Kenosis as a basis for testing the Creator’s action because it requires appropriate responses from creatures. This objection rightly sees that Essential Kenosis claims that the efficacy of divine causation relates directly to the love that non-divine beings may or may not express.

Response: In an interrelated universe of multiple causes, we make inferences about which actors exert primary causation given what we have reason to believe about these actors. This objection reminds us that one agent is never entirely responsible for any particular event. All events and things in the world arise through the influence of multiple causes. Existence is interrelated. My scheme builds upon this interrelatedness and accepts a multiple causation view. But it also agrees with the widespread intuition that, despite interrelatedness and multiple causes, we can plausibly attribute more causal responsibility to one agent or some agents than others. We may justifiably assert that the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, “Thy will be done,” is more evident in some events than in others.

Let’s look at an example. What do we regard as the causal explanation when we say that a boy threw a ball through a window? Assuming that the boy actually threw the ball, we may simply attribute responsibility to the boy. We would be correct in doing this, so long as we do not claim that the boy is the sufficient cause of the event. After all, wind, gravity, the hardness of the ball, the thickness of the glass, and a host of other factors played contributory causal roles. When we say the boy is responsible, we are making a claim about a particular cause, the boy’s throwing, as playing the primary causal role. But we need not also claim that the boy’s throwing was the full and sufficient role.

Likewise, saying that divine action is more prevalent in the world when creatures respond appropriately in love is compatible with saying that divine action is the primary cause of this love. This is especially true if one has reason to believe that God is the source of love. “Every good and perfect gift is from above,” to quote St. James (Js. 1:17).

Objection #5: All creatures should be equally revelatory of divine action. Some may object to love as the ultimate measurement for testing divine action because it affords greater revelatory capacity to complex creatures, e.g., dogs, dolphins, and humans, and less revelatory capacity to simpler entities, e.g., atoms, cells, or microorganisms. This objection is based upon the view that all creatures are equally capable of revealing divine love.

Response: Complex creatures are potentially more revelatory of God’s causal activity because they enjoy greater and more varied freedom and responsibility. If divine causation is necessary for all events and things, all creation can reveal God’s activity. However, creatures that are more complex afford greater opportunities for testing divine action in the world based, in part, on the nature of human inquiry. What we know best is our own complex experiences, although we still have much to learn. And we make more accurate inferences about complex creatures similar to ourselves than we make about creatures less similar. We are more likely, for instance, to attribute sadness to a dog after watching her listless behavior than we would sadness to a worm.

Additionally, the degree to which atoms, cells, and microorganisms can respond appropriately or inappropriately seems impossible at present to gauge with scientific instruments. I know of nothing beyond metaphysical speculation to say that the smallest entities of existence have the capacity for responses. But this does not mean that God is not active as a necessary cause in the smallest entities of our universe. Nor does it mean that such entities are entirely devoid of all capacities for responsiveness. It only means that our ability to test divine activity at the micro-level is seriously hampered. Our ability to recognize divine activity increases among complex creatures, in part because the diversity of their responses provide a wider range of possible actions to assess as possibly promoting or undermining overall well-being.

Christians have a strong precedent for claiming that organisms that are more complex are more revelatory of divine love. That precedent is Jesus Christ. That the highest revelation of divine love would take human form suggests that our best scientific measurements for divine love are likely to be most accurate when evaluating complex forms of existence. I know of no strong argument or evidence that God has been incarnated among beetles to the degree of complexity and diversity that God was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. As John put it in the first of his three letters, “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him” (1 Jn. 4:9).

Testing Creaturely Love

Below is an abbreviated explanation of what Essential Kenosis suggests for testing creaturely love. These comments are meant to help researchers wanting to explore love while avoiding methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. They are brief and will be expanded in work set to be published elsewhere.

1. Robust research on creaturely love includes reference to effective divine causal activity, insofar as the creaturely actions in question are deemed loving. The researcher who operates from the Essential Kenosis research program cannot account well for creaturely love without some reference to divine love. The more complex the organism, the more important reference to divine activity becomes. Research purporting to offer a robust explanation of creaturely love without reference to God runs the risk of adopting methodological naturalism. This essay might be taken as a clarion call to scientists who believe in God to be bolder in their references to divine action, or at least to adopt a less definitive or conclusive tone to love research that omits reference to God. If the researcher believes in God and believes that God is the source of all love, explanations of creaturely love will be incomplete and less robust if God goes unmentioned.

Essential Kenosis also suggests that God’s empowering not only transforms the creature; it also empowers the creature to be an agent of loving transformation for others. Christians who believe that God empowers and inspires love may be eager to accept an Essential Kenosis methodology that not only accepts but requires an explanatory role for divine action.

Of course, a key element in this work is an adequate definition of love. Too often love research is bogged down or largely irrelevant because love has not been defined well enough. Naturally, I recommend my own definition (to love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to God and others, to promote overall well-being) as potentially more adequate than others. This definition requires a role for both divine and creaturely causation in any act of creaturely love.

2. Robust research on creaturely love will include reference to the lover’s presumed intent or motives. If love requires intentionality, robust research on love cannot neglect reference to the agent’s motives and intent. An appeal to particular consequences will not suffice. After all, sometimes good emerges despite an agent’s intentions to generate ill instead of good. We should not call such unintended good the fruit of love. This means that researchers must either infer intent based upon particular indicators or ask the subject of research themselves to confess their motives. Either of these options will not provide indubitable grounds for measuring intent. But they do allow for significant degrees of probability, and they are necessary for research on love, if acting lovingly involves right intentions and motives.

3. Robust research on creaturely love will include references to the lover’s environment, relationships, and/or embodiment. If love involves a sympathetic (or empathetic) response to others (including God), robust research on love will refer to the lover’s relations. These relations may be social, societal, or cultural. They may be personal, familial, or romantic. The relations a person enjoys also include the bodily members, genetic structures, and mental capabilities. And these relations will always include a relationship with God, positive or negative, mature or immature, conscious or unconscious. Some of the most interesting research on love explores how these various types of relationships and constraints shape or hinder complex expressions of love.

4. Robust research on creaturely love will include reference to the consequences or outcomes of presumed loving or non-loving acts. Perhaps the most common way to do research on love is to examine the consequences of various acts and habits. This is important for the Essential Kenosis scheme because the scheme defines love in part as promoting overall well-being. To a greater or lesser degree, promoted well-being is measurable in part by the consequences of various events.

Assessing these consequences can take many forms. Researchers might set up experiments designating some events as value-positive (say, the giving of money to the poor). Others may research acts that are value-negative (say, the stealing of money from the poor). Some may do objective, statistic-based research based on the consequences. Some researchers may pursue qualitative analysis through use of testimonials and interviews. A very wide range of possible scientific methods avail themselves.

Conclusion

We need a philosophy of science that accounts for theological claims about God’s action in the world. In humility, Christians should make constructive claims about who God is and what God does. Wesleyans will likely be favorably disposed to my proposal that love is the divine attribute through which Christians should make sense of God’s other attributes and God’s interaction with others.

Some readers may want to ponder further my proposal that God’s love is never coercive, in the sense that God cannot fail to offer, withdraw, or override the freedom and agency God provides. This proposal is tied to the claim that God’s very nature is kenotic self-giving love. God’s relentless and steadfast love never fails to empower and inspire creatures. My proposal is really the view that prevenient grace is an essential feature of God. Understood in this light, I hope fellow Wesleyan theologians will see the proposal’s merits.

This article also proposes that the form and efficacy of God’s love varies and oscillates as our personal and relational God interacts with others. This may be the most novel idea of the essay, but I think readers will find it attractive upon reflection. Wesleyans have often implicitly recognized the importance of measuring divine action, although they rarely have suggested a conceptual scheme for doing so. I propose that the variety and oscillation of the efficacy of God’s love allows for the possibility of testing God’s action in the world by the degree to which events and individuals express love. My scheme may help both scientists and theologians make sense of claims about God’s activity in the world. The conceptual and ethical stakes are high enough that bold proposals like the one I offer are desperately needed.

The logic present in most paradigms relating science and theology leads to major problems. This logic leads to hostility between scientists and theologians and their disciplines. It leads to deep confusion and frustration, and it can lead to severe apathy and hopelessness about making some sense of life.

These negative consequences, at best, fail to inspire and motivate Christians to live holy lives of love. At worst, the usual ways of relating science and theology encourage humans to abandon loving God with their minds. At worst, the usual ways implicitly or explicitly reject a reasonable account of why a life of love and wisdom should be pursued at all. I find this unacceptable.

My humble hope is to have provided a proposal that many will find helpful. I endeavor to encourage us to live lives of love in response to the God. For God makes such love possible. This message seems most clearly revealed in light of the revelation of love as we find it in Jesus Christ and as expressed in the church’s Christ-life.

Notes

1. This paper was delivered as the Wesleyan Theological Society presidential address at the 2009 meeting held in Anderson, Indiana. Many ideas in this paper emerged while I flew to Akron, Ohio, to participate in a research team exploring love in the Pentecostal tradition. I thank the Stephen Post, Margaret Paloma, and Matthew Lee for the inspiring paper that served as the catalyst for “gelling” my thoughts about the variety of divine-action theologies. ↑

2. For a collection of essays on John Wesley, science, and contemporary Wesleyan theology as it pertains to science, see Thomas Jay Oord, ed., Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2009). This book is comprised primarily of papers delivered at the 2008 WTS meeting at Duke University. ↑

3. Among the better collections of writing on divine action in science are Philip Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, and Divine Action (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 2^nd ed. (Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2000), and Keith Ward, Divine Action (London: Collins, 1990). ↑

4. For essays exploring John Wesley’s approach to science and philosophy of science, see the following chapters in Oord, Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Laura Bartels Felleman, “Degrees of Certainty in John Wesley’s Natural Philosophy,” John W. Haas, Jr., “John Wesley’s Vision of Science in the Service of Christ,” Randy L. Maddox, “John Wesley’s Precedent for Theological Engagement with the Natural Sciences,” and Marc Otto and Michael Lodahl, “Mystery and Humility in John Wesley’s Narrative Ecology.” ↑

5. See John Hedley Brooke for a nuanced historical account of the relation between science and theology, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). The paradigm case for the clash between the church and science is the case of Galileo, and the authority on that conflict is William R. Shea, with Mariano Artigas, Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2006). ↑

6. See Karl W. Giberson and Donald A. Yerxa, Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), and Karl Giberson and Mariano Artigas, Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists verses God and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ↑

7. Key texts for the Intelligent Design movement include Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996), William Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, revised edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993). For a strong Wesleyan critique of Intelligent Design, see W. Christopher Steward, “On Giving Intelligent Design Theorists What They Want,” in Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology, Thomas Jay Oord, ed. (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2009). ↑

8. For what a Wesleyan approach to perceiving God through nonsensory perception might entail, see my essay, “Prevenient Grace and Nonsensory Perception of God in a Postmodern Wesleyan Philosophy,” in Between Nature and Grace: Mapping the Interface of Wesleyan Theology and Psychology (San Diego, Calif.: Point Loma Press, 2000). ↑

9. See Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958) and Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). ↑

10. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984). ↑

11. Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999). ↑

12. See Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989-91, Volume One (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), Philip Clayton, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 2000), John F. Haught, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000), Alan G. Padgett, Science and the Study of God: A Mutuality Model for Theology and Science (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), Ted Peters, “Theology and Science: Where Are We?” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 31:2 (June 1996): 323-343. ↑

13. On the issue of realism and the epistemology of theology and science, see Paul Allen, Ernan Mcmullin And Critical Realism in the Science-theology Dialogue (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008), Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (New York: Prentice Hall, 1966), Philip Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1989), Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology (London, T&T Clark, 2001), Nancey Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), Arthur Peacocke, Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). ↑

14. Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989-91, Volume One (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 16. ↑

15. John Wesley, “Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, Frank Baker, ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984 ff), 1:516-517. ↑

16. The key Intelligent Design texts opposing naturalism are Phillip E. Johnson’s Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995) and The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000). ↑

17. Clayton addresses these issues in several books, but see especially God and Contemporary Science (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998). Griffin deals with the problem by arguing for a religious and scientific naturalism, whereby God acts but never interrupts the causal structures of the natural world. Griffin argues that science need only reject a form of supernaturalism that entails the possibility that God could and would occasionally interrupt the causal laws of existence (Religion and Scientific Naturalism). Milbank addresses naturalism in several publications, see especially Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2^nd ed. (Malden, Ma.: Blackwell, [1990] 2006). Plantinga deals with the problem in several writings, including “Methodological Naturalism,” in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 49 (Sept. 1997): 143-54. ↑

18. For arguments from scientists for the compatibility between belief in God and contemporary science, see Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), Richard G. Colling, Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator (Bourbonnais, Ill.: Browning, 2004), Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2004), Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (New York: HarperOne, 2008). ↑

19. See Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002). ↑

20. In a personal email, Kenneth J. Collins notes that his understanding of divine action probably fits best here. For Collins’s explication of John Wesley’s theology, see The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 2007). ↑

21. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951). Henry Nelson Wieman, The Source of Human Good (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946). ↑

22. See his book, The Mind and Heart of Love: Lion and Unicorn: A Study in Eros and Agape (Cleveland: Meridian, 1956). ↑

23. See John Wesley, “Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” (BE 1984, I:516f). ↑

24. See Craig A. Boyd, ed., Visions of Agape: Problems and Possibilities in Human and Divine Love (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008), and Gary Chartier, The Analogy of Love: Divine and Human Love at the Center of Christian Theology (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint, 2007). For Arminian accounts of love as God’s reigning attribute, see Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001), Pinnock, et. al., The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity, 1994); Richard Rice, The Openness of God (Nashville: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1980), John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Suffering, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2007). ↑

25. See Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1972), Barry L. Callen, Discerning the Divine: God in Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2004), Barry L. Callen, God as Loving Grace: The Biblically Revealed Nature and Work of God (Nappanee Ind.: Evangel, 1996), H. Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill, 1988), and Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl, Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2005). ↑

26. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, 1 John 4:8. ↑

27. For a powerful argument in the regard, see Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003). ↑

28. One of the better scientific books to address the constraints to freedom is Nancey Murphy and Warren Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ↑

29. See Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1994). See also John B. Cobb, Jr., who titles his book on divine love and free creaturely response Grace and Responsibility (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995). For the importance of prevenient grace in religious pluralism, see Al Truesdale, With Cords of Love: A Wesleyan Response to Religious Pluralism, with Keri Mitchell (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2006). ↑

30. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 55. ↑

31. On how Essential Kenosis overcomes the theoretical aspect of the problem of evil, see Thomas Jay Oord, A Turn to Love: The Love, Science, and Theology Symbiosis (forthcoming from Brazos, 2010), ch. 6, “An Open Theology Doctrine of Creation and Solution to the Problem of Evil” in Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science, Thomas Jay Oord, ed. (Eugene, Or.: Pickwick, 2009), and “Championing Divine Love and Solving the Problem of Evil,” in The Many Facets of Love: Philosophical Explorations, Thomas Jay Oord, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007). ↑

32. John Wesley, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount,” (BE 1984), I:516f. ↑

33. This is similar to what David Ray Griffin calls “variable divine influence.” God’s influence upon others, says Griffin, is always formally the same but variable in content (Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, 147). ↑

34. The notion that God offers to creatures possible options for action is perhaps best articulated in the writing of some process theologians. See, for instance, John B. Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965), David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), Catherine Keller, The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (Routledge, 2003), and Marjorie Hewett Suchocki, God-Christ-Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1993). ↑

35. I defend this definition of divine love in several publications, but one of the fullest defenses is “The Love Racket: Defining Love and Agape for the Love-and-Science Research Program,” Zygon 40:4 (December 2005): 919-938. ↑

36. Promoting well-being involves enhancing the mental and physical aspects of reality. It may involve acting to attain sufficient food, clean air and water, adequate clothing and living conditions, personal security, and the opportunity for intellectual development. It may involve attaining the satisfaction of being cared for and sense of belonging, diversity of life-forms and cultural expressions, appropriate level of leisure and entertainment, and economic stability. Promoting well-being may involve acting responsively to secure a feeling of worth, medical soundness and physical fitness, deep personal relationships, social and political harmony, and the opportunity to develop spiritual/religious sensibilities and practices. Acting responsively to increase well-being may involve acting in ways that develop the person’s virtuous dispositions, habits, and character. To promote well-being is to act to increase flourishing in at least one but often many of these dimensions of existence. ↑

37. This seems to be the position of H. Ray Dunning, Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1988). ↑

38. Jürgen Moltmann argues this point well in The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 52-56. See also Mark Lloyd Taylor, God is Love: A Study in the Theology of Karl Rahner (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986). ↑

39. On this, see “Divine Love,” in Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays, Thomas Jay Oord, ed. (Kansas City: Mo.: Beacon Hill, 2002). ↑

40. This line comes from a Charles Wesley hymn by the same name. It also serves as the title of the book Thy Name and Thy Nature is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue, Bryan P. Stone and Thomas Jay Oord, eds. (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 2001). ↑

41. See Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). For a compelling case for why Lakatos’s approach is helpful for relating science and theology in pursuit of research programs, see Nancey Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). ↑

42. See David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748. ↑

43. Joseph Bankard, A New Defense of Universal Morality: Synthesizing the Natural and Social Sciences with Theism (doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate University, 2008). ↑

44. On the importance of religious experience, see Stephen T. Franklin, Speaking from the Depths: Alfred North Whitehead’s Hermeneutical Metaphysics of Propositions, Experience, Symbolism, Language, and Religion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990). ↑

I. Process Thought, Science and Religion, and the Love-and-Science Symbiosis

Many in the process theological and philosophical tradition have contributed in important ways to what is commonly called the science-and-religion dialogue. Alfred North Whitehead was motivated to contribute in part because he believed that the course of history depends upon our decision as to the relations between science and religion.^[2] Along with Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne -- two who are perhaps most often identified as significant process philosophers -- we should include among process figures who contributed to the dialogue people such as Samuel Alexander, Nicolai Berdyaev, Henri Bergson, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, William James, and a number of other individuals might also be included.

The contemporary era of science-and-religion scholarship, however, might be dated to 1966. Ian Barbour released a landmark book that year titled, Issues in Science and Religion. In that work, in other pieces he had written previously, and in various books and articles he has written since, Barbour notes the promise of process thought as a way to make headway in the science-and-religion dialogue. Because of his influence from the 1960s through today, many consider Barbour the godfather of the contemporary science-and-religion dialogue. (By the way, I encourage you all to read one of Ian’s latest books, Nature, Human Nature, and God, because I think it best identifies the influence that process thought has had upon his personal reflections.)

Today, the process vision influences many of the most important figures in the science-and-religion field. The Center for Process Studies has played an important part in influencing the field, not least through the writings of David Griffin, John Cobb, Marjorie Suchocki, and others. The recent addition to the Center of Philip Clayton, who is undoubtedly among the top handful of most important figures in the field and perhaps the most important figure overall, is a boon to Claremont Graduate University, Claremont School of Theology, and the Center for Process Studies. Philip’s initial work to establish the Center’s “Dialogues Concerning Science and Natural Religion” is likely to produce groundbreaking work as more people become aware of how process thought can be a compelling bridge between science and religion.

In recent years, a slightly different set of science-and-religion issues – although with obvious and often deliberate links to previous issues – has begun to be explored. Instead of asking about the relationship between science and religion – including religion’s varieties, doctrines, traditions, etc. -- some are beginning to explore the relationships between love and science. Of course, the interest in the relationship between love and science and how the two might be mutually beneficial is not without precedent. But the conscious and organized efforts of the past five years represent a new focus with new participants engaging the work.

This slightly different approach to issues in science and religion – the approach I have come to call “the love-and-science symbiosis” – offers a variety of advantages over the typical science-and-religion dialogue. For instance, sometimes the typical dialogue becomes mired in quibbles over doctrinal minutia inherited from “the faith of the fathers.” The love-and-science symbiosis bypasses many of these quibbles, while at the same time drawing from religious beliefs and practices that promote love. The unstated assumption by most interested in this new work seems to be that the most relevant aspects of the religious life are those that pertain to issues of love.

At the fore of the love-and-science symbiosis is the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, directed by Stephen Post, professor of medicine and ethics at Case-Western Reserve University. Post lists among the institute’s chief goals 1) to fund high-level scientific research on altruistic and unlimited love and 2) to develop a sustained dialogue between religion and science on the meaning and significance of unlimited love through publications, conferences, and seminars.

In the past couple years, the Institute has funded more than 20 scientific research projects with close to 2 million dollars in monies. Grants have been given for research in fields such as psychology, evolutionary biology, medicine, sociology, and neurobiology. Smaller grants have been provided for non-scientific research projects related to religion and philosophy.

To date, the primary financial and advertising support for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love comes from the John Templeton Foundation. The Foundation has pledged many millions of dollars to fund the Institute’s future projects as well. It will perhaps come as little surprise to those who have been attuned to the science-and-religion dialogue for the past decade to hear that the Templeton Foundation is supporting the Institute. The Templeton Foundation not only provides tens of millions of dollars to various science-and-religion enterprises each year, but Sir John Templeton himself has authored several small books on the importance and power of love.

II. Process Contributions to the Love-and-Science Symbiosis

Having provided a thumbnail sketch of the emerging field of inquiry I’ve called the love-and-science symbiosis, I intend to spend the remainder of the afternoon discussing substantive issues related to this field. Significant questions in science, philosophy, religion, and ethics have already emerged in the love-and-science symbiosis. Many of these questions pertain to the meaning and nature of love itself. Many reflect longstanding intellectual quandaries concerning the scope and role of science. Many echo questions that arise in the fields of bioethics, religious ethics, and social ethics.

I believe that process thought offers adequate and appealing answers to many of the questions being asked by those interested in the love-and-science symbiosis. In fact, I believe that process theological and philosophical thought provides the best overall vision for work in this field. I am often reminded of Charles Hartshorne’s words, found at the conclusion of the Library of Living Philosophers volume devoted to his thought. “My ultimate intuitive clue in philosophy is that `God is love’,” Hartshorne writes, “and that the idea of God is definable as that of the being worthy to be loved with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and entire being.”^[3] It was Hartshorne who earlier in his life said of Whitehead’s thought that “never before . . . has a really first-rate philosophical system so completely and directly . . . supported the idea that there is a supreme love which is also the Supreme Being.”^[4]

In the spirit of my belief that process thought can make important contributions to the love-and-science symbiosis, I offer ten such questions pertinent to this emerging field of interest. Following each question, I suggest an answer that I believe flows from process views related to theology, philosophy, science, and ethics. Unlike David Letterman’s top ten, however, my ten questions are offered in no particular order.

1. Can humans ever truly love?

In the mid-1960s, the Institute for Philosophical Research, under the direction of Mortimer Adler, engaged in an important project. Institute members decided to explore anew various subjects of continuing philosophical interest. Out of the work of this Institute, a rather obscure but erudite book emerged called, The Idea of Love, written by Robert Hazo.

The first half of The Idea of Love deals with human and divine love, and it features analysis of the thought of Anders Nygren, Martin C. D’Arcy, C. S. Lewis, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther, Fenelon, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Augustine, and others. The main questions addressed in this analysis pertained to the relationship between natural human love and supernatural human love.

Those interested in the love-and-science symbiosis still consider these questions today. The two main questions are these: Can humans act lovingly on their own, without any inspiration from deity? And, is every act of human love actually an act of God with no human contribution? If one answers that humans can act lovingly without divine inspiration, one seems to put God on the metaphorical sidelines when major moral questions are at issue. But if one presupposes that creatures are utterly sinful and incapable of any good thereby requiring God to love through them (Martin Luther’s idea of humans as a tube through which God drops love that flows through the individual to others), it would seem that any good that humans do comes solely from beyond them. Few if any of those interested in the love-and-science symbiosis are suggesting that humans never really love at all, which seems to be Reinhold Niebuhr’s position on love, at least when Niebuhr talks about political power struggles and the inevitable irony of history.

I believe that process thought can contribute an adequate answer to these lines of questioning. Process thought contends that God acts prior to creaturely experiences. And in this act, God presents a proposition with a range of possibilities for action. These possibilities are graded in relevance to the moment at hand. Creatures love when responding to this proposition by instantiating the possibility that will increase overall well-being. This means that process thought contends that human love is natural, and yet human love requires divine persuasion. Humans really do act lovingly, but they cannot act without God’s prevenient loving activity.

2. Is love sympathetic/affective/tendential or is it intentional/benevolent/judgmental? To put the question more simply, is love a matter of the emotions or of the will?

Robert Hazo sets up an interesting dichotomy in the second half of his book, The Idea of Love. In one section, he reports on the thought of those who regard love to be primarily or solely a matter of emotions and affections. These individuals understand love to what Hazo calls “tendential.” Listed in the group are Baruch Spinoza, William James, Soren Kierkegaard, Erich Fromm, Nicolai Hartmann, and others. (Parenthetically, some consider Charles Hartshorne to regard love primarily or solely in terms of this tendential aspect.) In a second section, Hazo reports on the thought of those who understand love primarily or solely in terms of will and judgments. Listed in this group are Rene Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Blaise Pascal, and others. In the contemporary love-and-science symbiosis, this question of whether love is a matter of emotions or an act of the will remains. In my own writing, I have couched the debate in terms of sympathetic response vs. intentional action.

I believe that process thought contributes a helpful answer to this either/or dilemma. Whitehead argued that every moment of an individual’s existence logically begins with a feeling – a prehension -- of what has come before. This is a sympathetic response to the data of the past that impinges its power upon the present. But each moment of existence logically concludes with a decision made by the individual about how to respond to the past. This is the self-determination of an intentional action. What this means for love is that process thinkers might understand love to involve both responsiveness and intentionality. With this both/and in mind, in fact, I have defined love as intentional action, done in sympathetic response, to attain overall well-being.

3. Is love essentially altruism?

Some evolutionary theorists have suggested that all organisms, including humans, must act egoistically if they are to survive, thrive, and be reproductively successful. Yet there are many examples of humans and nonhumans alike that have acted for the good of another and thereby made personal sacrifices. A number of theories have emerged to explain this altruism of personal sacrifice, including kin altruism theory (which says that we act altruistically toward kin because our kin share our genetic lineage and what we want most is for our genetic lineage to continue), tit-for-tat or reciprocal altruism (which says that we act altruistically only because we expect to receive some benefit in return) and group-selection theory (which says that altruists gather into groups so that, as a group, they can survive and thrive in competition with groups consisting of egoists). While each of these theories provides at least partial explanations for altruism, each supposes that egoism continues to play an important role. None of the theories accounts for instances of altruism in which an altruist acts self-sacrificially despite receiving no personal gain. In terms of love, these theories fail to account for sacrificial love with the good of the stranger or enemy in mind.

The questions of altruism and egoism become especially tangled in evolutionary psychology. Many of the pertinent issues can be presented with an illustration: Suppose Tom decides to give his life to save a stranger from certain death. And suppose that this saving would be done so that no one, not even the one saved, was to know that Tom acted as savior. This altruistic act would not be to Tom’s reproductive advantage, and let us suppose that Tom acts believing that this saving work will be noticed and remembered by no one. This scenario appears to be “Altruistic Love Exhibit A,” because Tom seems not to gain anything in return for his actions. Not so fast, say skeptics. Tom may actually be acting egoistically as a savior, because he finds a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction in giving his life for others. In other words, an egoistic motive may trigger Tom’s seemingly altruistic action. And what seemed to be pure altruism is actually egoism in disguise.

Process thought can help overcome many of the conundrums that arise in the altruist-egoist debate. It can do so in its hypothesis that all existing things are interrelated. In an interrelated universe, the line between egoism and altruism becomes blurred. What I do for others affects me, because others, including my future self, will respond to my actions. Of course, I may act believing that I will likely receive less benefit in return than the benefit I provide to others. But we need not think of such predominately altruistic actions as valuable only if they remain free of any egoistic intent or result.

Process thought also supports the notion that in a world of interrelated individuals, predominately egoistic actions may be vitally important for the increased good of the whole. In some circumstances, acting in ways that will predominately benefit oneself may be the most loving thing to do. This means that love, which involves promoting overall well-being, sometimes calls for predominately egoistic actions. This is something many feminist philosophers and theologians have been saying for some time.

4. Is the highest or best love agape, eros, or philia?

Since Anders Nygren’s mid-nineteenth-century book Agape and Eros, the Greek words for love have become commonplace in the parlance of many religious Westerners. From Nygren’s heyday through today, it seems that the majority of religious people who know about the Greek words for love regard agape love as superior to the other love-types. This majority includes scholars of religion, although it seems not to include many biblical scholars.

Various problems arise when we regard agape as superior to the other love types. One problem is that there seems no warrant for this high regard in either Greek philosophy or Christian scripture. Sometimes authors of the Christian New Testament, for instance, regard agape highly and sometimes they do not. Sometimes New Testament authors use philia to speak of the highest form of love.

Related problems emerge when regarding agape as more superior or higher than the other love-types. The fact is that ancient and contemporary texts offer many uses and definitions of agape and of the other love-types, and it is difficult to know exactly what an author means when using one love word, such as agape, or another. I appreciate and agree with Bob Adams who wrote recently, “‘Agape’ is a blank canvas on which one can paint whatever ideal of . . . love one favors.”^[5]

Within the last five years or so, the Journal of Religious Ethics devoted an entire issue to a discussion of the three love-types, agape, eros, and philia. Colin Grant defended a version of Nygren’s thesis that agape is the highest love. Carter Heyward argued that feminists like herself believe that eros should displace agape in any hierarchy of loves. And Edward Collins Vacek suggested that philia deserves as much attention if not more than the other two if love is chiefly about affirming members of a community for the sake of communally shared life. What’s a scholar working in the love-and-science symbiosis to think about ranking the three classic love-types?

I suggest that process thought can help us see that all three loves play an important part in the work to increase the common good. Inspired by the idea that all three loves are necessary and that particular circumstances determine which love should be expressed, I have suggested that those in the love-and-science symbiosis embrace what I call “full-orbed love.” Such a love values the repaying of evil with good that is inherent in agape. Full-orbed love appreciates the value and beauty in others that is inherent in the eros love-type. And full-orbed love acknowledges the importance of ongoing relationships of friendship and mutual support.

5. How should we talk about the relations that love requires?

It is almost universally recognized, if only implicitly at times, that love requires relations. So too, the general principles of science and the practices of scientists presuppose that existing things relate to other existing things. From theories of relativity and interactions in the micro-world explored by physicists to social theories pertaining to global politics and economics proposed by social scientists, the often-unstated assumption is that cause and effect occurs because existing things relate one with another.

But what theory of relations best accounts for both the intuition that love requires relations and the presupposition of science that existing things relate? I suggest that Whitehead’s theory of internal and external relations can be a powerful conceptual tool for understanding the relations inherent in love and science. The ultimacy of relations in Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme leads many to consider him a “relational” philosopher, and the theology that has emerged from his influence has been referred to as a form of “relational theology.”

Whitehead speculates that existence consists of the “essential relatedness of all things” (1968 [1933], pp. 227-28). The “things” that are related – which includes all existing entities -- are moments of experience or actual occasions. Existing individuals are internally related to what has come before, as they prehend prior experiences. This means, as Whitehead puts it, “every actual entity is what it is and is with its definite status in the universe,” because “its internal relations to other actual entities” shape it (ibid., p. 59). The organism enjoys a moment of what biologists call “autopoesis” as it forms itself in response to past influences. (By the way, the phrase, “in sympathetic response,” in my definition of love is meant to account for the internal relations of organisms.)

Whitehead’s philosophy also speaks of “external relations.” By this, he means that once an organism comes to be, it affects other organisms that will arise in the future. Whitehead likes to explain this influence upon future others by saying that “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’” (1978 [1929], p. 22). Just as each organism, through its internal relations, drew upon its relations with others as it came into existence, each organism subsequently becomes a datum for future organisms as they come into being. Future organisms cannot change what has happened in the past, and therefore past organisms are externally related to them. Charles Hartshorne refers to the cause-and-effect relationality of existence when he speaks of “the social nature of reality,” in which “to be decided in part by others is essential to being as such” (1951, p. 527). I believe that those in the love-and-science symbiosis would do well to use the language of internal and external relations as they reflect on love and construct hypotheses for their scientific research.

6. What difference does the phrase “God is love” make, if God is an ultimate mystery and altogether different from us?

In his just-released book, Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service, Stephen Post bucks a trend most apparent in various forms of apophatic theology. Post opposes what sometimes seems to be theology politically correct position, when he openly endorses natural theology. This endorsement is crucial if theology is to play a significant role in matters related to love and science.

Post argues that analogical language is vital to discourse about God and the world. We should “analogically attribute qualities of perfect parental heart to God,” writes Post, “because parental love is the most intense and abiding form of love with which we are familiar” (109). He even states that “for those who accept the parental analogy between human beings and God, a process theism in which God suffers in pathos from the waywardness of all human beings seems inevitable” (111). Post extends the possibility of analogy even further when he argues that “there is simply no other way to talk about divine love than by considering the highest forms of love that we know through nature” (117).

These quotes reveal that process thought has already influenced at least one important contributor to the love-and-science symbiosis. But I think process thought can be used to inspire even deeper insight into the similarities and differences between God and creatures. Charles Hartshorne’s work is important in this regard, because he offered a vision of a relational and personal God. Hartshorne embodies Whitehead’s charge that God “[should] not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. [Rather, God] is their chief exemplification.”^[6] I have argued process thought can lead those in the love-and-science symbiosis to affirm that divine love and creaturely love is of the same kind, although divine love differs in degree. They are of the same kind, because both are intentional actions done in sympathetic response to promote overall well-being. They are different in degree, for instance, because God’s love promotes well-being to all, while our localized existence means that our love does not affect all. The love-and-science symbiosis needs the type of rigorous speculation that process thinkers are used to doing as they delineate the similarities and differences between divine and creaturely love.

7. How can we account for widespread genuine evil while also claiming that God exists and inspires love in creatures?

The occurrence of genuinely evil events is a problem for many theists in the love-and-science symbiosis. This problem appears as a major theme in a recent book of essays edited by John Polkinghorne titled, The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis. And it is front and center in a recently published collection of essays edited by Willem Drees titled, Is Nature Ever Evil? Religion, Science, and Value.

Most theists who attempt to solve the problem end up suggesting some form of divine self-limitation at the creation of our universe, self-limitation on God’s part in ongoing God-creature relationships, or both. This solution, of course, does not answer well the question why a self-limiting God would not become un-self-limited in the name of love and prevent genuine evil from occurring. The self-limiting God remains culpable for failing to prevent genuine evil, and a culpable God is not a God who loves perfectly.

Process thought is slowly becoming better known for its solution to theoretical aspect of the problem of evil. Although a variety of process hypotheses can solve the problem, what each hypothesis shares in common is the claim that God cannot withdraw or override creaturely freedom. A God unable to veto creaturely freedom cannot be held culpable for failing to prevent the evil committed by free creatures. And, according to process thought, all creatures are free to some degree.

Unfortunately, many who are at least somewhat familiar with process thought and who also have interest in the love-and-science symbiosis wrongly believe that the God process theists envision constantly battles against creativity or some evil demi-God. John Polkinghorne endorses the flawed notion of divine self-limitation as an answer to theodicy in the aforementioned book The Work of Love. He writes that self-limitation of divine power “is quite different from Process Theology’s conception of an external metaphysical constraint upon the power of deity.” The kenotic vision of divine self-limitation, continues Polkinghorne, maintains, “that nothing imposes conditions on God from the outside” (96). One way that process theists can contribute to the love-and-science symbiosis is to clarify that the God they envision is neither constrained by external metaphysical conditions nor wrestles against equally powerful nondivine forces. The God of process thought embodies the metaphysical principles. And this God should be regarded as the Almighty One, because the God envisioned by process theists is the mightiest individual and is the only being who exerts might upon all other individuals.

8. Is the capacity to love a natural emergent phenomenon?

In the broader science-and-religion dialogue, theories of emergence are gaining popularity. In fact, Philip Clayton, whom I mentioned earlier, is an important leader in the research and writing on emergence in nature. Although the questions of emergence have not yet arisen in the love-and-science symbiosis, I expect them to eventually. Can process thought contribute something important to the issues pertaining to emergence?

As far as I know, the actual word “emergence” is not found often in the literature of process philosophy and theology. The idea that something new can emerge when particular conditions apply, however, is a part of the process tradition. Whitehead suggested that although all actual entities have a mental pole, consciousness emerged from that which was not conscious. And the process endorsement of general evolutionary theory, including a necessary role for deity in evolution, provides a basis for affirming some forms of emergence theory. David Griffin discusses notions of emergence in his recent work, Religion and Scientific Naturalism, when he offers a process theory to account for punctuated equilibria and the lack of intermediary species in the fossil record.

But what might be said about the emergence of the capacity to love? And does process thought have something to say on this score? John Cobb tackled this question in a 1967 book titled, The Structure of Christian Existence, a book whose concluding chapters receive far less attention today than they should. In his chapter simply titled, “Love,” Cobb notes that, in an extremely loose sense, it can be said that every entity that exists loves itself and other entities. But Cobb believes that it is better to reserve the term “love” for the activities of much more complex organisms – human and nonhuman animals in particular. He speaks of thresholds that are crossed, with the capacity for love emerging when an organism evolves the capacity to respond in ways that are not merely instinctual. The most complex creatures -- those who act out of developed consciousness – appear capable of the most complex forms of love. In the scenario that Cobb lays out, we see levels of emergence at play. Although Cobb is not providing a detailed scientific explanation for emergence, he offers the love-and-science symbiosis a proposal for how we might best regard the evolutionary emergence of the capacity to love.

9. Why regard love supremely if we have no reason to believe that some actions are any better than others?

Some forms of postmodern theory exerting influence today suggest that there exists no reason to believe that some actions are better than others. If we either do not have access to universal ethical norms or such norms do not exist, there seems no basis for moral judgments. This suggestion, what might be called extreme ethical relativism, undermines the very nature of the love-and-science symbiosis. It undermines the idea that we should champion love as supremely desirable, and it undermines the idea that scientific research can help make the world a better place.

The process tradition can contribute to the love-and-science symbiosis by arguing with Whitehead that common sense must play a role in ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics. David Griffin defends this position in several of his works by arguing that we all affirm the hard-core commonsense notion that some things are better than others. All people show in their practice, even if they deny it verbally, their belief that there are better or worse courses of action. In Unsnarling the World-Knot, Griffin puts it this way, “we all presuppose in practice that some modes of behavior and intended outcomes are inherently better than others and that some states of affairs, whether internal or external, are more beautiful, pleasing, fitting, tasteful, or what have you, than others. We may differ in our judgments and even our criteria; but that a distinction between better and worse exists we all presuppose” (U, 40-41). I submit that those working in the love-and-science symbiosis can use hard-core commonsense notions to answer those who suggest that affirming extreme ethical relativism is required or even truly defensible as a postmodern alternative.

10. Can love make an ultimate difference?

At the heart of the emerging interest in the love-and-science symbiosis is the presupposition that the activities of this field have the potential to enhance the common good. To say it more simply, this field presupposes that love can make progress.

Process theology, with its emphasis upon the freedom of actualities, the loving influence of God, and the genuine openness of the future, offers a conceptual home for those who believe that love can make progress. Marjorie Suchocki, near the end of her book, The End of Evil, offers the same conclusion although in differing words. “History can mirror a reconciliation of things in a peace which works the well-being of earth and its inhabitants,” writes Suchocki. “Our freedom and finitude paradoxically hinder that task, and yet, with the ever-present empowerment of God, make it possible” (155). Unlike those who believe that human nature is so thoroughly corrupt that progress in love is impossible, and unlike those who believe that humans are so good and God both good and controlling such that progress is inevitable, process thought suggests that progress is possible but not predestined. And that is a realistic message that supports the hopeful presuppositions of the love-and-science symbiosis.

III. Conclusion

A new day is dawning within that field of study – the science-and-religion dialogue – that process thinkers have long made and continue to make significant contributions. It may be that the process vision will be even more influential in providing answers to theoretical and existential questions emerging from work in the love-and-science symbiosis than it has been in providing answers to questions in the science-and-religion dialogue. At least the dawning of this new day generates such a grand hope!

Notes

1. This essay was written for public presentation at the Center for Process Studies, October 2, 2003. The reader will notice that I have done little to document sources, quotes, and references mentioned herein. And what little documentation one finds differs in form. This style reflects the purpose of the essay, which was that it be presented in a public forum. ↑

2. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967 [1925]), 181. ↑

3. Charles Hartshorne in Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed. The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1991), 700. ↑

4. Charles Hartshorne, Reality as Social Process (Boston: Free, 1953), 197. ↑

5. Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 136. ↑

6. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343. ↑