A Theology of Divine Vulnerability: The Silence That Gives Light

A Theology of Divine Vulnerability: The Silence that Gives Light understands confidence in the idea of God to rest largely on three claims. The first is that God is responsible in some quite fundamental way for the existence of the universe--for the fact that there is anything at all. The second is that God’s 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 here and shares fully, somehow, in the joys and pains of transient life. Peter Hooton considers these claims on the whole sympathetically. He prefers--to traditional Christian views of God’s omnipotence--a more nuanced understanding of God’s 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 Christian’s relationship with God as essentially a compassionate participation in the reality signified by the crucified and risen Christ.

Peter Hooton is adjunct research fellow in public theology at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture on Charles Sturt University (CSU)’s Canberra campus.