State of the Cast, Your Calls, & 2013 Coming Attractions

I enjoyed this. It's great listening to individual theologians talking, and there's obviously great value in that, but sometimes we need to see a bit of the contrast between them in order to better understand what they have to say. I think I learnt more about radical theology in this one edition than I have in the last year. Or, better, I have a better understanding of where and how it fits within theology than did before. So keep this sort of format going, please! Think of it as the tutorial that follows the lecture.

Now, a question came up that would be better suited to the speakpipe, but my computer's deaf, so that ain't happening. This might be just a matter of semantics, but I'd like to get my brain straightened out!

You said somewhere in this episode (and you've said it before) that the essential difference between process and open theology is that open theology claims that God is self-limited, whereas process sees what we would consider a limitation a fundamental part of the nature of God.

Now, the question: how would you classify Thomas Jay Oord? He seems to call himself 'open relational' and I think that's the term you used in this edition of the podcast. However, Oord talks about 'essential kenosis', meaning that kenosis isn't a choice God made, but part of the essential nature of God. This seems to comfortably put him in the process camp, yet he uses the language of open theology. In my (admittedly limited) reading of Oord's work I don't see too much evidence of process metaphysics either, but he doesn't seem to be asking metaphysical questions, so that mightn't be important.

So is Oord a process thinker who uses open language? Is he some sort of hybrid that is, by virtue of HBC's definition, process? Do these sorts of classifications cause more angst than they need?

All thoughts gratefully received!

We responded to YOUR calls.... Don't you want to call in? Just click HERE: http://www.speakpipe.com/homebrewedchristianity