By Charles E. Stephan
Foreword
This essay is a concise jargon-free presentation of what I think Thomas Jay Oord believes about Christianity because his beliefs are currently presented only piecemeal in several books. A second purpose of this essay is to explain why I think Oord’s beliefs are important. I use the name “Primacy-of-Love Christianity” to refer to Oord’s beliefs because he used the phrase “primacy of love” in several publications, as noted in the Appendix. (Male pronouns are used because they are traditional.) Much of what is said herein is based on things published by Oord but some of what is said herein is based on very helpful emails I received from Oord. My estimate is that over 80% of this essay has been reviewed and approved by Thomas Jay Oord. Nevertheless, some of what is said herein has not been reviewed by Oord. Therefore, the reader should understand that Thomas Jay Oord has NOT affirmed that all the statements made in this essay accurately present his beliefs concerning Christianity. This essay does not contain anything with which Oord is known to disagree. Thomas Jay Oord is very busy working on a number of projects. I am very grateful for the help he has given me.
Preface
Thomas Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity is a unique and important version of Christianity because it solves several problems that plague some other versions of Christianity.
1. It solves the problem of evil.
God’s love prevents him from controlling anything and motivates him to give freedom and free will to everything he creates, which makes sin, evil, pain, and suffering possible. God does not cause, enable, or condone sin, evil, pain, and suffering but God cannot prevent them because of his love.
2. It solves the problem of hell.
God’s love prevents him from sending people to eternal torment but not everybody responds positively to God’s love. God gives people repeated chances, if necessary, to respond positively to his love, even after they die. People who do not respond positively to God’s love do not enjoy the benefits of an eternal loving personal friendship with God. God’s love is relentless, but God’s love does not always win.
3. It solves the problem of the uninformed.
God’s love is compassionate and relentless and therefore gives babies, cognitively impaired people, and natives isolated in jungles chances to give a positive response to his love after they die. If they give a positive response, they will enjoy an eternal loving personal friendship with God.
4. It solves the problem of the existence of so many versions of Christianity.
God’s love motivates him to give freedom and free will to everything he creates. The disagreements that exist among Christians concerning the interpretation of the Bible demonstrate that God gave people free will and that God does not control people. God’s love prevents him from controlling anything. God inspired, but did not control, the people who wrote and canonized the Bible. The Bible contains important information, but it also contains errors, metaphors, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and anthropomorphisms. The fact that God does not control people explains why there are so many interpretations of the Bible and so many versions of Christianity.
5. It solves the problem of science vs. Christianity.
God’s love inspires and empowers scientists to reach consensus scientific conclusions that provide usually reliable empirically based information regarding the world, such as the theory of evolution and the age of the earth. God endowed people with the ability to obtain substantial empirical and nonempirical information about the world. Science deals with empirical information about the world but science cannot say anything regarding nonempirical information about the world.
6. It solves the problem of discrimination.
God’s love extends to all people all the time and inspires people to love other people. All people should have equal opportunities regardless of sex, race, color, nation of origin, religion, or age. LGBTQIA+ identities and same-sex marriages are acceptable, not sinful.
7. It solves the problem of abortion.
God’s love invites both people who are pro-life and people who are pro-choice to enjoy an eternal loving personal friendship with him. Both pro-choice and pro-life people can embrace Primacy-of-Love Christianity because it does not encourage people to be pro-life and does not encourage people to be pro-choice. Primacy-of-Love Christianity is neutral with regard to abortion.
Thomas Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity is biblical, coherent, understandable, plausible, and insightful. It is the version of Christianity that makes the most sense of the Bible, the world, and human experience.
Introduction
The existence of so many versions of Christianity and the absence of cooperation between some of the versions can be explained by the fact that God does not control anything. Nevertheless, it is certainly possible to think that these disagreements reflect poorly on Christianity. Christians should focus more on their shared beliefs than on making their differences appear to be more important than their similarities. The shared beliefs are much more important than the differences. Thomas Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity is a version of Christianity because it, like all (or almost all) other versions of Christianity, affirms the following shared beliefs.
One, and only one, God exists.
God created the world.
The best information regarding God is provided by the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The Bible provides the best information regarding Jesus.
The Bible is the inspired word of God.
The Bible reveals God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is why Christians sometimes refer to God as the Trinity or the triune God.
Humans are created good and with free will, which makes it possible for them to love but also makes it possible for them to make bad decisions.
The death and resurrection of Jesus make it possible for people to enjoy an eternal loving personal friendship with God despite the bad decisions they make.
The first message of the Bible and of Primacy-of-Love Christianity is “God is love.” Although most, if not all, Christians believe that “God is love,” they might not believe that “God is love” means that love is God’s governing attribute, which means that all God’s thoughts, words, and deeds express his love. Primacy-of-Love Christianity takes seriously the following implications of “God is love.”
God’s love motivated him to create the world and give it freedom and natural laws and give humans free will because only beings with free will can love.
God does not control anything.
God is a universal spirit who cannot be perceived with the five human senses.
God is a loving spirit who is present everywhere in the world at all times, which means that each person can experience God and his love at all times in all places. God is always with everybody.
God’s power is the power of love.
God loves all people all the time.
God does not cause, enable, or condone sin, evil, pain, and suffering but God cannot prevent sin, evil, pain, and suffering.
God’s essence does not change but his emotional state changes because God experiences peoples’ pain, suffering, and joy. God suffers with, and celebrates with, all people.
God gets new information as the future unfolds.
God’s love prevents him from sending people to eternal torment but not everybody responds positively to his love.
God inspires and empowers people to work with him to make the world a better place.
God’s love inspires people to love God, love themselves and other people, love the rest of the world, and love doing good.
The second message of the Bible and of Primacy-of-Love Christianity is “God calls each person to live a life of love.” (The appendix identifies many things written by Thomas Jay Oord that contain the phrase “live a life of love.”) People who respond positively to God’s love do such things as the following.
Believe that God’s governing attribute is love.
Join with other people to worship and praise God.
Get baptized and receive communion.
Express compassion, gratitude, and forgiveness when dealing with other people.
Help people work for the common good by taking care of themselves, other people, and the rest of the world.
Love God, themselves, family, friends, outsiders, strangers, enemies, other creatures, and the rest of the world.
Study the Bible.
Follow Jesus’ teachings.
Confess their sins.
Thank God and people who help him.
Work to prevent and overcome sin, evil, pain, and suffering.
Be kind and tolerant.
Help the church be a community that promotes the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world.
Dialogue and cooperate with other versions of Christianity.
Give all people equal opportunities regardless of sex, race, color, nation of origin, religion, or age.
Accept LGBTQIA+ identities and same-sex marriages.
Love people who are pro-life and love people who are pro-choice.
Encourage peace, harmony, and cooperation.
Make friends.
Visit prisoners.
Listen to people who are lonely or need companionship.
Help the poor.
Help people do such things as solve problems and recover from sickness.
Promote the well-being of inanimate things by preserving them.
People who respond positively to God’s love enjoy an eternal loving fellowship with God and live a life whose purpose is to promote overall well-being.
Overview
The following is a jargon-free overview of Thomas Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity.
- The existence of the world can be interpreted to be evidence for the existence of a forever God who exists for all eternity and therefore has no beginning and no end.
- The existence, history, and characteristics of humans and the rest of the world provide information regarding the forever God, whereas the Bible provides information regarding the Christian God. Taken together, this information can be interpreted to mean that the forever God is the Christian God.
- Nature, other religions, and science also provide information regarding God and his creation.
- The best information regarding God is provided by the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Bible provides the best information regarding Jesus. God inspired, but did not control, the people who wrote and canonized the Bible. The Bible contains important information, but it also contains errors, metaphors, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and anthropomorphisms. Textual criticism, history, science, and human experience can be useful when interpreting the Bible.
- The Bible reveals God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is why Christians sometimes refer to God as the Trinity or the triune God.
- The unifying theme of the Bible is “God is love.” John said God is love, Jesus said love is the greatest commandment, and Paul said the greatest virtue is love.
- To love is to act, by thought, word, and deed, in a way that (a) is intentional, (b) is uncontrolling, (c) relates an initiator to a recipient, and (d) promotes the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world.
- There are at least five kinds of love (agape is “in spite of” love, eros is “because of” love, philia is “friendship” love, ahavah is “affection” love, and hesed is “faithfulness” or “steadfast” love). Each kind of love promotes the overall well-being of God, humans, and the rest of the world. Love is expressed in numerous ways.
- The first message of the Bible and of Primacy-of-Love Christianity is “God is love.” “God is love” means that love is the governing attribute of God, which means that all God’s thoughts, words, and deeds express his love. Love is God’s nature and essence.
- The second message of the Bible and of Primacy-of-Love Christianity is “God calls each person to live a life of love.”
- God’s love is constant, creative, uncontrolling, compassionate, forgiving, unconditional, self-giving, relentless, inspiring, and comforting.
- God’s love motivates him to create so there is something for him to love and something to respond to his love.
- God created the world.
- God gave freedom and natural laws to his creation because he is uncontrolling. God’s gifts of freedom and natural laws mean that God can try to influence the ongoing development of the world, but he cannot control it.
- Humans are created good and with free will because God is love and humans are created in the image of God. Humans have free will because God is uncontrolling and because only beings with free will can love. Creatures with free will can decide to love God but they can also decide not to love God, i.e., decide to sin. People sometimes use their free will to make bad decisions and not do what God wants them to do. Sin works against overall well-being whereas love works for overall well-being, i.e., for the common good.
- The world that exists today is not the same as the world that was initially created by God because of decisions made by creaturely co-creators and because of God’s ongoing creating by such means as self-organization, emergence, and evolution.
- God is not omnipotent because he cannot sin, he cannot change the past, he cannot do things that are logically or physically impossible, and he cannot do things that his love will not allow him to do.
- God is omnipresent because he is a spirit and therefore does not have a localized physical body. God is present to all humans and all other creatures everywhere at all times.
- God is omniscient in the sense that he knows everything that can be known. God does not know the future because it has not occurred yet and therefore cannot be known. God acquires new information as the future unfolds.
- The future is not predetermined and so God cannot have foreknowledge.
- People are not predestined, preordained, or elected.
- Jesus is the clearest demonstration that God’s love is forgiving, unconditional, and self-giving.
- The death and resurrection of Jesus make it possible for people to enjoy an eternal loving personal friendship with God despite the bad decisions they make.
- God’s compassionate love prevents him from sending anyone to eternal torment.
- God gives people repeated chances, if necessary, to give a positive response to his love, even after they die, because he is relentless. Nevertheless, some people might never give a positive response to God’s love. People who do not respond positively to God’s love suffer the consequences of separation from God because they do not enjoy the benefits of an eternal loving personal friendship with God.
- God does not cause, enable, or condone sin, evil, pain, or suffering.
- God cannot prevent, or create obstacles to, sin, evil, pain, and suffering because his love prevents him from controlling anything.
- God responds to people’s pain and suffering by suffering with them, by trying to help them heal and flourish and by trying to bring good from bad.
- All good works are the result of interactions involving God’s love, creaturely responses, and conducive conditions.
- God’s love inspires people to love God, love themselves and other people, love the rest of the world, and love doing good.
- Decisions people make, how people live their lives, and peoples’ pain and suffering are important because they affect God’s emotional state and how God expresses his love. They also affect other people and the rest of the world.
- Jesus’ love commands and teachings are the basis of Christian ethics.
- The church should be a community that promotes the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world.
- A variety of religions and versions of Christianity exist because God’s love is uncontrolling.
- People should dialogue and cooperate with other versions of Christianity.
- God loves all people all the time and so (a) all people should have equal opportunity regardless of sex, race, color, nation of origin, religion, or age, (b) same-sex marriages are acceptable, not sinful, and (c) LGBTQIA+ identities are acceptable, not sinful.
- God wants each person to respond positively to his unconditional love.
- People can have various kinds of experiences they consider to be encounters with God.
- Religion should be separate from government because God’s uncontrolling love would not use government to affect people’s religious views.
- God inspires and empowers scientists to reach consensus conclusions that provide usually reliable empirically based information regarding the world. Science uses various means to gather empirical evidence and interpret all the available empirical evidence that is relevant to a subject, and then continuously repeats this two-step process in order to try to improve human understanding of how the world works. Primacy-of-Love Christianity is compatible with scientific consensus conclusions regarding such things as the theory of evolution and the age of the earth. Science and the Bible work together to provide information regarding God and the world.
- The primary message of the Bible and of Thoms Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity is “God is love and God calls each person to live a life of love.”
Summary
Thomas Jay Oord’s Primacy-of-Love Christianity believes that Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection provide the best information regarding God and believes that the Bible provides the best information regarding Jesus. The Bible is the chief authority for Christianity. Several Christian Bibles and several versions of some of those Bibles exist, but Oord’s version of Christianity believes that all Christian Bibles express the same overall message. The Bible is a collection of writings that have special meaning because God inspired them in a special way. The people who wrote and canonized the Bible were influenced by God and by their assumptions, philosophies, worldviews, and languages, which were not the same for all the writers. The best interpreters of the Bible try to understand the assumptions, philosophies, worldviews, and languages of the various writers. Although the Bible was inspired by God, inconsistencies occur in the Bible and only blind faith can lead to the conclusion that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, and unambiguous. It is sometimes difficult to separate factual material from errors, metaphors, and anthropomorphisms. Also, ambiguous text is difficult to deal with. No version of Christianity can be compatible with everything said in the Bible. When Christians say a concept is biblical, they mean that the concept is their interpretation of what one or more verses in the Bible are intended to say. Unfortunately, it is possible to find verses in the Bible that can be interpreted to support a variety of concepts that might or might not be compatible. The important biblical concepts are those that convey the overall message of the Bible as a whole.
Primacy-of-Love Christianity says that “God is love” is the unifying theme of the Bible. John said God is love, Jesus said love is the greatest commandment, and Paul said the greatest virtue is love. God’s governing attribute, everlasting essence, and unchanging nature is love. God is perfect in love. God’s love takes precedent over all his other attributes. Everything that God does is loving activity. God is sometimes angry and upset but he is always loving. Biblical passages that portray God as unloving are in error. These passages do not fit with the clearest revelation of God in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The following definition of love is compatible with Primacy-of-Love Christianity.
To love is to act, by thought, word, and deed, in a way that (a) is intentional, (b) is uncontrolling, (c) relates an initiator to a recipient, and (d) promotes the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world.
This definition is very inclusive without being vague because (i) it applies to both God’s love and human love, even though they differ in degree, duration, necessity, and scope, (ii) the various kinds of love and the numerous ways of expressing love all promote the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world, and (iii) “overall well-being” is a synonym for “the common good” and includes such things as physical, mental, cognitive, emotional, social, spiritual, economic, and ecological well-being. “Overall” also means that justice can have a role in love. For example, if doing good for one or a few hurts many, the justice aspect of love requires that the common good take precedence. If an action is accidental, it is not intentional. “Uncontrolling” means that love cannot cause the application of sufficient power to guarantee an outcome. God’s love does not allow him to apply enough power to control a situation and guarantee an outcome. An act of love might or might not involve self-sacrifice. The initiator and the recipient are the same in self-love.
God’s love motivated him to create our world so there would be something for him to love and something to respond to his love. In order for God to create humans that can love him, humans had to be created with free will because only creatures with free will can love. However, humans with free will can decide to not love God and to do evil. Because God’s governing attribute is love, he cannot create a world in which human-caused evil is not possible.
The world was created in an uncontrolling way because God’s love is uncontrolling. In addition, God created the world from something, not from nothing. A God who can create from nothing and whose governing attribute is love would create obstacles to evil. God obviously does not create obstacles to evil, which means that God cannot create from nothing. And there is no good reason to believe that God can create from nothing.
The world was created in an uncontrolling way and was created from something. A possible scenario that is consistent with these two requirements says that God continuously creates worlds one after another. Each world is created from the chaos that is left from a previous world. God exists forever (i.e., for all eternity) and therefore has no beginning and no end. Because God’s governing attribute is love, he has always been creating worlds. There was never a first moment of God’s creating because there was never a first moment in God’s existing. God was creating worlds before ours and God will continue to create worlds after ours. Only God and his love are everlasting; worlds come and go. God’s love motivates him to always be creating and always love whatever he creates, but God is free to decide what and how to create. God always creates out of what he created earlier, never from nothing. God can work in uncontrolling ways with inanimate forces, processes, objects, entities, systems, relationships, structures, matter, and conditions in order to help things self-organize and/or emerge. Each created world, either initially or later, contains creatures that God can love and that can love him.
Because of self-organization, emergence, and God’s uncontrolling influence, our world, including space and time, was created from the chaos that was left from a previous world. God existed before the Big Bang occurred and created something new at the Big Bang from something that God had created before the Big Bang. As God created and continues to create our world, it includes a variety of inanimate and animate things, a variety of simple and complex creatures, and the freedom, natural laws, regularities, randomness, and other conditions that are necessary for the world as we know it to emerge and develop. God invites creatures to be co-creators with him in the ongoing development of our world. What our world is like at any time after its initial creation depends on God’s uncontrolling influence, the existing animate and inanimate things, self-organization, and emergence. Everything that God creates is intrinsically good. The created world proclaims that God exists and gives clues concerning him and his love.
God has unique limitations and unique abilities. His unique limitations include his having limited abilities because he cannot sin, he cannot change the past, he cannot do things that are logically or physically impossible, and he cannot do things that his uncontrolling love will not allow him to do. In addition, because he is a spirit and does not have a localized physical body, God’s interactions with the world cannot be physical. His unique abilities include his being everlasting and his knowing everything that can be known. Also, God is present in all places in the world at all times because he is a universal spirit.
God and creatures can express at least five kinds of love: agape (“in spite of” love), eros (“because of” love), philia (“friendship” love), ahavah (“affection” love), and hesed (“faithfulness” or “steadfast” love), each of which promotes the overall well-being of God, humans in this life and the next, and the rest of the world. God’s power is the power of love, and it is exerted through uncontrolling activities. God loves each human being and everything else. The way that God expresses his love depends on what is appropriate in each individual situation. God’s love inspires people to love God, love all humans, love the rest of the world, and love doing good.
God’s love is self-giving. God gives gifts because love gives gifts. The most important demonstration of God’s self-giving love is Jesus. However, self-giving does not have to involve self-sacrifice. Self-giving also characterizes God’s giving up control of his creation when he gave it freedom and when he gave it natural laws. God’s love makes these gifts irrevocable and so God cannot withdraw or override them. God’s gifts of freedom and natural laws mean that God can try to influence the ongoing development of the world, but he cannot control it. As the world developed and continues to develop, God is not responsible for diseases and such natural disasters as hurricanes. Also, predator-prey relationships develop as animals evolve. When God gave freedom to the world, he gave free will to all creatures complex enough to receive and express it, because only creatures with free will can love. Creatures with free will can decide to love and to cooperate with God or they can decide to not love and to not cooperate with God. God took a risk by giving free will to creatures because that made it possible for creatures to make bad decisions. God is not responsible for the bad decisions that people make. Because the future depends, in part, on decisions made by people, humans are important creatures.
God’s love is uncontrolling. God’s love makes it impossible for him to control, force, dictate, compel, coerce, command, overwhelm, manipulate, override, or dominate anything to an extent that guarantees an outcome. Nevertheless, God can interact with and try to influence things to which he gave freedom because he can nurture, invite, recommend, enable, help, ask, support, coax, inform, suggest, nudge, lure, facilitate, offer, enlighten, empower, inspire, coordinate, advise, console, motivate, teach, guide, and encourage them. God can try to persuade as long as the persuasion is gentle and is not controlling. God can try to influence but he cannot control. Because God’s love prevents him from controlling anything, God’s inability to control is involuntary. Jesus provides the clearest picture of the uncontrolling love of God. Because God’s love is uncontrolling, God cannot control situations, events, forces, processes, people, and other things. God continuously promotes overall well-being and helps people thrive everywhere at all times by means of uncontrolling interaction with the world. Because God cannot control, people are empowered to act on the basis of decisions they make using their free will.
God’s love is relentless. Although creatures can choose not to love, God cannot choose not to love. God creates out of love and loves everything he creates at all times and in all places. Even when people make bad decisions, God loves them and encourages them to do good. God’s love extends to all people when they do good and when they do evil. God works at all times and in all places for the overall well-being of the world and thereby helps it flourish. God’s love prevents him from giving up on people who do not love him. If necessary, God gives people multiple chances to respond positively to his love, and even after people die, God continues to invite them to accept his love. God always makes maximal effort but there is no guarantee that he will be successful because his love is uncontrolling. Some people might never respond positively to God’s love.
God’s love is compassionate. God’s love motivates him to invite everyone to enjoy an eternal loving personal friendship with him in this life and the next. Even though unconditional love is God’s essence, nature, and governing attribute, his emotional state changes because he is compassionate, forgives people, and is affected by human prayers, pain, suffering, and joy. God suffers and empathizes with people and tries to console them and help them thrive. Also, the way God expresses his love changes, and God can repent, which in the Bible means that God changed his mind about something. God affects the world, and the world affects God’s emotional state. Even though God’s essence does not change, his emotional state changes and the way he expresses his love changes in order to be appropriate for each particular situation.
Some people have physical and mental pain and suffering because of natural evil, which exists because of the way the world developed after it was initially created and includes such natural negative events as diseases and disasters. Other pain and suffering are the consequences of human-caused evil because some humans use their free will to decide to not love and not cooperate with God or to not love things that were created by God. Pain and suffering are not God’s fault because his uncontrolling love makes it impossible for him to control or override things to which he gave freedom and free will. God responds to people’s pain and suffering by trying to help them heal and flourish and by trying to bring good from bad.
God’s love explains why God’s existence is compatible with the existence of sin, evil, pain, and suffering in the world. “God is love” means that love is God’s governing attribute. Because God is love, he created the world to include (i) the freedom, natural laws, regularities, randomness, and other conditions that are necessary for life as we know it, and (ii) creatures for him to love and that can love him. In order for creatures to be able to love, they must have free will. However, creatures that have free will can decide to love God or decide not to love God, i.e., decide to sin. Creatures that decide not to love God can also decide to do evil. God’s love motivated him to give freedom to the world, which made natural evil possible, and to give free will to people, which made human-caused evil possible. Human love cannot exist without free will, but free will cannot make love possible without also making evil possible. God’s love does not allow him to withdraw or override the freedom, free will, and other conditions that he gave the world and its creatures. God’s love motivates him to promote overall well-being, but it simultaneously limits him to uncontrolling actions. Even though God always does as much as his uncontrolling love allows him to do to promote the overall well-being of humans and the rest of the world, God’s love does not always win because the world has freedom and humans have free will.
All people are created good by God because God is love and people are created in God’s image. All people are also created with free will by God because God is love. Because God is love, humans are born good and with free will. Unfortunately, people sometimes use their free will to make bad decisions and not do what God wants them to do. Even though people are born good, disobeying God can become a habit. Sin is the opposite of love, and so people sin when they do not believe in God and do not accept his invitation to love and to cooperate with him. People have free will and so they can decide to sin or decide not to sin. People sin because they desire the wrong things too much. Sin makes the world worse than it might have been because sin impairs the well-being of sinners and the well-being of their friendship with God, other humans, and the rest of the world. Sin works against overall well-being whereas love works for overall well-being.
In spite of human disobedience and sin, God loves all people and wants them to love him. God tries to help people resist sin because people suffer when they do not love him. Separation from God has natural negative consequences, which are forms of punishment, because the sinner does not enjoy the benefits of an eternal loving personal friendship with God. God encourages sinners to be sorry and to change their ways, so they do good and do not do bad. God forgives sinners who sincerely ask for forgiveness. God does not cause, enable, or condone sin, evil, pain, and suffering. Despite sin, evil, pain, and suffering, the world remains intrinsically good because of God’s love.
Although God’s love motivates him to promote overall well-being, three things make this work difficult: (a) some creatures use their free will to make bad decisions and so they oppose or resist God’s desires, (b) God’s love prevents him from controlling or overriding anything, and (c) God is a spirit and therefore does not have a physical body that can do physical things, so God invites creatures to do physical tasks that he wants done. For these three reasons, there are many things that God cannot do unilaterally but can try to do with the help of things he created. God cannot accomplish such things as successfully dealing with evil without human help and humans cannot accomplish such things as successfully dealing with evil without God’s help. Because there are things that God cannot do singlehandedly, God needs cooperation from the world and so he works through such people as health-care providers. God needs creaturely cooperation and favorable conditions in order for love to win. All good works involve God and the world working together.
God’s love sometimes motivates him to initiate miraculous uncontrolling actions, but God cannot cause miracles without the cooperation of the world. A miracle is a surprising or unexpected beneficial event that affects a creature, object, or situation in order to promote overall well-being and occurs, if conditions in the world are favorable, because of a special initiating and uncontrolling action of God. The special action of God might be an invitation, or it might be a suggestion of a novel possibility or opportunity, or it might be a suggestion of a new structure or form of existence. Miracles involving such living things as creatures, organs, and cells occur only if they respond in a positive manner. When miracles involve only inanimate forces, processes, objects, entities, systems, relationships, structures, matter, or conditions, God can interact with, but not control, such natural means of change as emerging, developing, evolving, self-organizing, shifting of the earth, blowing of wind, and flowing of water. Miracles require both a special action by God and the cooperation of the world. Miracles often enhance overall well-being in surprising ways. Some miracles are devices for teaching.
Epilogue
If someone asks, “What’s love got to do with it?,” the answer is “Everything.”
Appendix
This appendix contains auxiliary information concerning the Preface, Introduction, Overview, and Summary presented above. Previous versions of these items were posted on “c4ort.com/newsletter.” These items are based on publications (listed below) for which Thomas Jay Oord is the only or first author and on many very helpful emails from Oord.
Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays (two essays). 2003
Science of Love. 2004
Relational Holiness. 2005
Postmodern and Wesleyan? (two chapters). 2009
Defining Love. 2010
God Reconsidered (one chapter). 2010
The Nature of Love: A Theology. 2010
The Best News You Will Ever Hear. 2011
The Uncontrolling Love of God. 2015
God and the Problem of Evil (two chapters). 2017
Divine Impassibility (one chapter). 2019
God Can’t. 2019
God Can’t Q&A. 2020
Panentheism and Panpsychism (one chapter). 2020
Methodist Christology (one chapter). 2020
Love, Divine and Human (one chapter). 2020
Open and Relational Theology. 2021
Pluriform Love. 2022
Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming (one essay). 2023
The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence. 2023
God After Deconstruction. 2024
My Defense. 2024
Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God (one essay). 2024
“God Can’t” and “The Uncontrolling Love of God” are probably the best ones to read first.
The phrase “primacy of love” occurs on page 67 in “Science of Love”, on pages v, 1, and 138 in “The Nature of Love”, on page 160 in “The Uncontrolling Love of God”, on pages 1 and 24 in “Pluriform Love”, on page 458 in “Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be LGBTQ+ Affirming”, and on page 46 in “My Defense”.
Oord is not the only modern author to use the phrase “primacy of love.” The following books have this phrase in their titles.
The Primacy of Love. 1955. A. Adam.
The Primacy of Love. 1992. P.J. Wadell.
Wisdom from Franciscan Italy: The Primacy of Love. 2011. D. Torkington.
The Primacy of Love. 2015. M.J. Spyker.
The Primacy of Love. 2022. I. Delio.
None of these books interpret “God is love” the way Oord does.
Primacy-of-Love Christianity says that God’s love is more important than God’s simplicity and God’s sovereignty, and so Oord’s version of Christianity is not compatible with the classical (aka traditional) version of Christianity described by Gerald Bray in his 2021 book titled “The Attributes of God: An Introduction” and by James E. Dolezal in his 2017 book titled “All That is in God”.
Primacy-of-Love Christianity was inaccurately characterized as possibly unbiblical or unChristian by William Lane Craig on page 145 in the 2012 book titled “God and the Problem of Evil”, by Kevin J. Vanhoozer on page 13 in the 2020 book titled “Love, Divine and Human”, and by Brian J. Orr on page 184 in his 2022 book titled “A Classical Response to Relational Theism”.
The phrase “live a life of love” (or a very similar phrase) occurs on the following pages in the books listed above.
Page 134 in “Relational Holiness”
Page 29 in “Postmodern and Wesleyan?”
Page 120 in “The Nature of Love: A Theology”
Pages 21, 40, and 41 in “The Best News You Will Ever Hear”
Page 64 in “The Uncontrolling Love of God”
Page 82 in “God and the Problem of Evil”
Pages 5 and 183 in “God Can’t”
Page 249 in “Panentheism and Panpsychism”
Page 118 in “Open and Relational Theology”
Page 468 in “Why the Church of the Nazarene Should Be Fully LGBTQ+ Affirming”
Pages 159 and 179 in “God after Deconstruction”
Page 15 in “My Defense”
Page 140 in “Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God”