Some books make arguments. Others attempt to reimagine an entire theological landscape. Thomas Jay Oord’s A Systematic Theology of Love: God and Creation, Volume 1 belongs firmly in the latter category. This opening volume of what promises to be a landmark systematic theology represents perhaps the most comprehensive articulation to date of Open and Relational Theology (ORT), while also offering Oord’s most mature argument that Christian theology ought to be organized not around divine sovereignty, omnipotence, or immutable perfection, but around the confession that stands at the heart of the Christian story: God is love.
This is an ambitious undertaking. Oord is not merely revising one doctrine among many. He is asking whether every major locus of Christian theology might be reimagined if love were allowed to function not simply as one divine attribute but as the interpretive center from which all theological reflection proceeds. Whether one ultimately embraces his conclusions or not, the breadth of the project and the consistency with which Oord pursues it make this one of the most significant contributions to contemporary systematic theology in recent years.
The book’s central claim is both elegant and demanding. Love, Oord argues, is not merely something God does. Love is who God eternally is. Consequently, every theological claim must be evaluated according to whether it coheres with God’s unwavering commitment to loving relationship and the flourishing of creation. Throughout the volume, Oord defines love as acting intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. This deceptively simple definition becomes the grammar through which doctrines of God, creation, providence, freedom, prayer, suffering, and divine action are reconsidered.
One of the volume’s greatest strengths is its remarkable accessibility. Oord has long possessed the rare ability to write serious theology without unnecessary technical obscurity, and this work continues that pattern. Despite sustained engagement with biblical scholarship, philosophy, historical theology, and contemporary science, the prose remains inviting. The “Big Ideas” that introduce each chapter orient readers without oversimplifying the material. This is a substantial academic work that nevertheless remains teachable—a quality too often absent from systematic theology.
The conceptual center of the volume is not simply a new doctrine but a new theological orientation: love becomes the organizing principle for every subsequent doctrine. Arguing that God’s self-giving love is not merely a voluntary restraint of otherwise coercive power but the very character of God’s eternal life, God’s love is essentially kenotic. God does not choose, on occasion, to act non-coercively; rather, coercion is incompatible with who God is. Divine power is therefore always amipotent—expressed through uncontrolling, others-empowering, relational love that faithfully accompanies creation rather than overriding it.
This vision shapes Oord’s treatment of creation, providence, creaturely freedom, petitionary prayer, and the reality of evil and suffering. It also undergirds one of the book’s most significant achievements: a morally coherent account of divine love in the face of tragedy. Rejecting appeals to inscrutable providence or hidden divine purposes, Oord insists that God is always working for healing, reconciliation, and flourishing, even when those divine purposes are resisted by the genuine agency woven into creation itself. Whether or not readers embrace every aspect of Oord’s Open and Relational proposal, they will encounter a theological vision marked by remarkable internal coherence, intellectual courage, and profound pastoral sensitivity.
Among the book’s most groundbreaking contributions is Oord’s sustained rejection of creatio ex nihilo. In its place, he proposes that God is the “Ever Creator,” eternally bringing forth new creation in loving relationship with an everlasting creation (creatio ex creatione sempiternalis en amore). While many readers will find this among the volume’s most controversial proposals, it is also one of its most important. Oord argues that the doctrine of creation out of nothing has long sustained theological assumptions about unilateral divine power. His alternative seeks to preserve both God’s unwavering love and the genuine agency of creation, thereby offering a more coherent account of providence, freedom, and suffering.
For me, however, the significance of this volume extends beyond its doctrinal claims. As a practical and public theologian, I find myself continually asking not only whether a theology is internally coherent, but what kind of communities it forms. Every doctrine carries within it an imagination of human flourishing. Every vision of God quietly shapes our practices of leadership, our understanding of power, our posture toward neighbors, and our capacity for welcome.
This is where Oord’s work becomes especially generative.
If God’s power is fundamentally noncoercive, then Christian leadership cannot ultimately be sustained through domination or control. If God eternally acts through persuasive love, then communities formed in the way of Jesus must likewise resist manipulation, fear, and exclusion. If God’s deepest desire is the flourishing of all creation, then the church’s vocation cannot be reduced to preserving institutional survival or defending theological boundaries. Instead, Christian communities become living signs of God’s peaceable dream for the world—places where reconciliation is practiced, strangers become neighbors, enemies become conversation partners, and belonging is extended as gift rather than reward.
Although Oord does not explicitly develop such ecclesial implications at length, they pulse beneath nearly every page of this volume. Oord’s theology invites us to imagine congregations that embody what I have elsewhere called a shalomic imagination—communities learning to participate in God’s ongoing work of nurturing the flourishing of all and everything. In an age marked by polarization, nationalism, ecological crisis, and profound loneliness, such an imagination is not peripheral. It is urgently needed.
Perhaps this is where Oord’s insistence upon love proves most disruptive. Love, as he describes it, is never sentimental. It is active, relational, responsive, and relentlessly oriented toward the well-being of others. Such a vision unsettles theological systems that prioritize certainty over relationship or power over presence. More importantly, it unsettles churches tempted to measure faithfulness by doctrinal precision while neglecting the relational practices through which the love of God becomes visible in the world.
The volume’s engagement with the Christian theological tradition is equally noteworthy. Oord converses generously with Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Wesleyan theology, process thought, open theism, analytic philosophy, and biblical scholarship. He critiques classical theism without caricature, demonstrating both scholarly fairness and intellectual humility. Readers from more traditional theological commitments will undoubtedly challenge aspects of his conclusions, particularly regarding divine omnipotence and the implications of Essential Kenosis for divine freedom. Others may question whether certain biblical portrayals of miraculous intervention or judgment receive sufficient theological weight.
These are important conversations, and Oord neither avoids nor dismisses them. Yet even readers who remain unconvinced by portions of his constructive proposal will likely recognize the significance of the questions he raises. Too often systematic theology has assumed metaphysical commitments inherited from Greek philosophy or post-Reformation scholasticism without asking whether they adequately reflect the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Oord’s project is a sustained invitation to revisit those assumptions through the lens of divine love.
That invitation feels particularly important within our present cultural moment. Public perceptions of Christianity are too often associated with exclusion, certainty, domination, or fear. Against these distortions, Oord offers a theological vision in which God’s very being is endlessly relational, faithfully present, and oriented toward healing. His work reminds us that theology is never merely speculative reflection about God. Theology forms imagination. Imagination shapes practice. And practice, over time, becomes public witness.
The enduring gift of this first volume, then, may not simply be that it places love at the center of systematic theology. It is that Oord refuses to allow love to remain an abstraction. Love becomes the criterion by which doctrines are judged, power is understood, suffering is interpreted, and creation itself is cherished.
For those of us concerned with the future of the church, this is where the conversation becomes especially fruitful. If Oord is right that God’s life is eternally characterized by generous, noncoercive, relational love, then our congregations are called to become more than communities of shared belief. They are invited to become ecologies of belonging—places where the radically hospitable love of God is practiced in ways that contribute to the flourishing of neighbors, neighborhoods, and the whole creation.
Whether one finally agrees with every aspect of Oord’s constructive theology is, in one sense, secondary. The larger achievement of this remarkable volume is that it compels us to ask whether our own theological systems, ecclesial practices, and public witness genuinely reflect the God whom Christians confess is love. Few questions are more urgent. Few contemporary systematic theologies pursue them with greater scholarly care, theological imagination, and pastoral hope.
