Love's Availing Power: Imaging God, Imagining the World

Paul R. Sponheim explains God's willingness to accept risks in creating human freedom. Sponheim presents an understanding of God's power at work "in with and under" the lives of creatures, encouraging relationships and inspiring activity on behalf of creation. Sponheim's formulation of freedom in relationship - born at the intersection of existential theology and process thought - provides a way between the extremes of individualism and a homogenizing that obscures the reality and responsibility of the individual. The power of love is not dominating coercion but a power that avails and helps to accomplish a truly human life.