A Theology of Divine Vulnerability

A Theology of Divine Vulnerability: The Silence that Gives Light uses three claims for confidence in the idea of God. The first is that God is responsible in some quite fundamental way for the existence of the universefor the fact that there is anything at all. The second is that Gods own existence, and essential goodness, are not vitiated by the presence of evil in the world. And the third is that God knows we are herethat God loves the creation and shares fully, somehow, in the joys and especially in the pains of transient life. Peter Hooton considers these claims on the whole sympathetically. He prefersto traditional Christian views of Gods omnipotencea more nuanced understanding of Gods power and draws on a rich plurality of voices to describe God as much more loving than wrathful, as persuasive rather than coercive, as more passible than impassible, and the Christians relationship with God as essentially a compassionate participation in the reality signified by the crucified and risen Christ.