Open & Relational Theology (ORT): What is it?

[This is Part 2 of a few, inspired by Mark Karris' article, posted earlier in this blog. Also, these are my thoughts about a theological perspective that seems to be more consistent with my reading of Scripture, my experience and my observation. However,  after 65 years of life I am still striving–and always will be–to better who God is and how he works in the cosmos.]

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was introduced to the ideas of ORT when I was a Teaching Assistant (TA) at Trinity Western University (TWU) for the "Introduction to the Old Testament" course. At that time I had been a follower of Jesus and a student of all things biblical for forty years, and up to that point, I'd never heard of ORT. What I did know, however, was that the theodicy that I'd been taught and had embraced, had left me "wanting" in terms of my faith.  I had understood God to be omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (everywhere present at all times) and omnipotent (all powerful). Yet, God is also love––not that God is loving, but that God is love––that is, that love is God's nature, that love is at the very centre of who God is. Therefore, God can only act in ways that are loving, because God is love! 

However, that is not always the God I read  about in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments. That is not what I experienced and observed in my world. I tried to convince myself that God was all those things: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and love, but the longer I live, the more I read, the more my conservative theology left me "wanting." However, I didn't want to acknowledge my doubts, so I just continued to push through for years and refused to consider any other views of who God is and how God works in this world. 

As a hard working TA, I believed that I needed to explore ORT more; after all, it was part of the course material for which I was responsible. And what I read, started to gradually, make much more sense to me than what I had held to for four decades. Through my research, I stumbled upon the writings of Thomas Jay Oord. I read (and I listened to) his book, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015). Later I read his less academic version, God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse and Other Evils (Grassmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2019). Then I attended a week-long workshop hosted by the Vancouver School of Theology (VST), where Oord explained his theology in greater detail and where we had the opportunity to get to know the person. 

While I won't try to explain his take on ORT in detail, here are some key quotes from his book, Uncontrolling Love, page 107:

Open and relational theology embraces the reality of randomness and regularity, freedom and necessity, good and evil. It asserts that God exists and that God acts objectively and responsively in the world. This theology usually embraces at least these three ideas: 

1. God and creatures relate to one another. God makes a real difference to creation, and creation makes a real difference to God. God is relational.
2. The future is not set because it has not yet been determined. Neither God nor creatures know with certainty all that will actually occur. The future is open.
3. Love is God's chief attribute. Love is the primary lens through which we best understand God's relation with creatures and the relations creatures should have with God and others. Love matters most. 

Oord acknowledges that there are ways in which advocates of ORT disagree and that ORT is a rather large umbrella under which its advocates interact, discuss and even debate (in love, of course). 

Since God is love (1 John 4:7–12), God can do nothing other that what is loving. It is God's nature. To make it clear––though it is terrible grammatically––God can't not love, or God can only act in ways that are loving! The portrayals of God in Scripture (and elsewhere) that demonstrate that God is anything but loving are, in my opinion, incorrect because they are inconsistent and even contradictory to the life, teaching, deeds, death, resurrection and high-priesthood of the Logos (the Word) who became flesh and pitched his tent among us; aka, Jesus Christ (John 1:1–18). I cannot prove that Jesus is the Word become flesh, but I have my reasons for choosing to believe that claim. 

And because I believe that claim, I cannot believe that his Father––to whom he prayed and whose will he came to accomplish––commands, commits or condones the mass murders of men, women, children and all other creatures, as depicted and described so clearly throughout the Old Testament and referenced in parts of the New Testament. I also cannot believe that God, who is love, if God could intervene, would ignore the desperate pleas and petitions of human beings who strive to live by faith––and even those who don't, because we are all God's children, Acts 17:28––in the face of intense and ongoing suffering caused by genuine evil. These portrayals of God are written records of how those humans conceived of God and God's work in the world, and in their lives. They got some of it right, and they got some of it wrong––just like I do––and you, too, I'm guessing. What they are to be commended for––and I hope that I am as well––is that they continued in their search to know God better and to make sense of who God is and how God works in the world, to the best of their ability.  

[My Next Post: 'ORT and the Present Pandemic' in which I will be sharing some of my thoughts on A Letter from Catherine Keller, dated April 2, 2020]