Abstract

A defense of the New Testament view that all things are to be united in Christ, which entails that the ultimate destiny of the universe, and of all that is in it, is to be united in God. Keith Ward argues that this conflicts with classical ideas of God as simple, impassible, and changeless—ideas that many modern theologians espouse, and which Ward subjects to careful and critical scrutiny. He defends the claim that the cosmos contributes something substantial to—and in that way changes—the divine nature, and the cosmos is destined to manifest and express the essential creativity and relationality of a God of beatific, agapic, redemptive, and unitive love.