Asheville Forum: Richard Rice
Asheville Adventist Forum: Richard Rice
IMPORTANT:
Please note that this meeting of the Asheville Adventist Forum will be held via Zoom. If you wish to be part of this meeting, please send an email saying so to Connie at ConnieHayward@gmail.com by the night of Wednesday, December 9, 2020. She will send you the password and link that you will need to log into the meeting. Please log in a few minutes before starting time. If you have friends who would be interested in this topic and whom you wish to introduce to the Forum chapter, please send their names and email addresses to Connie. It is likely that we will have some people attending from far and wide, which makes Zoom meetings so interesting.
Date & Time:
Sabbath, December 12, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Topic:
“Does God Have a Future?”
During our time together, Richard Rice will review the central concerns of open theism, describe its major differences with the more traditional view of God, note some of the controversies it has generated, and invite our Forum members to share their questions and reactions to this perspective on God.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Richard Rice shared the following information about himself:
I retired in July of this year as professor of religion at Loma Linda University. My academic background includes degrees from La Sierra College, Andrews University (MDiv), and the University of Chicago Divinity School (MA, PhD). I began teaching at the La Sierra campus of LLU in 1974 and joined the School of Religion faculty at Loma Linda in 1998.
The books I’ve written fall into three general areas. Those directly related to my interest in theology and philosophy of religion include Reign of God: An Introduction to Christian Theology from a Seventh-day Adventist Perspective, a basic overview of Adventist doctrines which is used on numerous campuses, both in the USA and overseas; Reason and the Contours of Faith, which deals with some of the central concerns of philosophy of religion; and Believing, Behaving, Belonging: Finding New Love for the Church, a popular defense of the importance of Christian community in light of the pervasive individualism of Western culture. Those related to the challenges that suffering poses, particularly for healthcare professionals, include When Bad Things Happen to God’s People; Ministryhealing: Toward a Theology of Wholeness and Witness, and Suffering and the Search for Meaning: Contemporary Responses to the Problem of Pain. I am also one of several conservative Christian scholars for espousing what is variously identified as “open theism” and “the openness of God”—a view of God that has attracted a good deal of attention, some of it rather heated, from conservative theologians as well as philosophers of religion. My first book appeared in 1980 under the title The Openness of God. And my latest treatment of this topic was published by Intervarsity Academic in April of 2020. It’s entitled The Future of Open Theism: From Antecedents to Opportunities.
My wife also retired from Loma Linda University this past July. Gail, RN, MA, EdD, was for many years director of faculty development at LLU. Our daughter Alison and her husband Olivier are members of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in the department of Romance Languages and Literature. They have two daughters. Our son Jonathan is a Physician Assistant who works with a spine surgeon in Thousand Oaks, CA. He and his wife Rebekah have two sons and a daughter.
For further information contact Connie Hayward, 828-693-1105 (h), 828-388-1575 (c), conniehayward@gmail.com.
Ron Lawson may be contacted at SondleyWriter@gmail.com.
