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First, Does God want me to forgive those who have hurt me, continue to choose evil over good, and are unrepentant? My response, unhesitatingly, is Yes, God does want you to forgive those who have hurt you, and so on, and God wants this precisely because you are, as you say, a human being created in God's

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image. I have no hesitation in giving this answer because to give any other would require me to contradict what I take to be essential elements in the normative witness of the Christian community. Ifanything is dear to me from the gospels' accounts of Jesus' preaching, it is that forgiveness is always in order toward those who have sinned against us, and that the forgiveness we owe them has no limits. The love of our neighbor as ourselves to which we are called is consistently expounded to include both love of our enemies and the willingness ever to forgive any and all who have need of our forgiveness.

But having said this, I would be the first to insist that nothing is more essential theologically than to have a right understanding of what is, and is not, meant by the "forgiveness" to which we are called as well as by the "love" of which it is an expression. On what I take to be such a right understanding, for one to love another-whether we're talking of God's love of others or of the love to which God calls all who are created in God's image-for one to love another, always involves two things: first of all, to accept the other unconditionally, for what she, he or it actually is, thereby allowing the other to make a difference to oneself and what one is to do; and then, secondly, to act toward the other, on the basis of such acceptance, so as to realize, as far as possible, consistently with one's similar obligations to all the others affected by one's actions, the other's own true good. Forgiveness, then, is simply loving in this same twofold way any and all who have acted hurtfully and unrepentantly against one, not allowing their offenses to qualify in any way one's accepting even them unconditionally for what they are and then acting so as to bring about, so far as possible, what is good for them, too.

This, stated all too briefly, is the understanding of "love" and "forgiveness"

on the basis of which I have responded unhesitatingly, Yes, God does want you

to love your neighbor as yourself and, as an essential expression or form of such

love, to forgive anyone and everyone who, for whatever reason, stands in need

of your forgiveness. But, given the fact that the terms "love" and "forgiveness"

may be understood in other, sometimes very different senses from those I've

tried to clarify, I have no trouble understanding how my response to the

question might appear more problematic than I take it to be.

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But what about the second question? Granted that God does indeed want me to forgive any and all who are in need of my forgiveness, what ifI won't-or can't-forgive them? On what I take to be an adequate Christian theological understanding of human existence, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that, notwithstanding God's call to each of us, in some mode or modes, to live as God's beloved children-which very much includes God's wanting us to love our neighbors and to forgive without limits any who may have offended against us-notwithstanding our all having been thus called by God, we have each always already rejected God's call, freely choosing to live contrary to it. Consequently, it's true of everyone of us that we won't-i.e., will not-love our neighbors as ourselves, including our enemies, and hence will not forgive any of them who stands in need of our forgiveness. Moreover, as long as we persist in our disobedient choice, we not only 'llrill not love and forgive others; we also can not love and forgive them. Because we won't love and forgive, we can't love and forgive, either. But, of course, the good news of the gospel, as Christians understand it, is that what is impossible for us is nevertheless possible for Godthat because God has always already loved and forgiven all of us, each of us, despite her or his persistent disobedience, ever remains God's beloved child who, as such, ever has the possibility of trustfully accepting God's love and loyally loving in return. In other words, each of us, although a sinner, is always already a forgiven sinner, who therefore needs only to accept her or his being forgiven through obedient faith in order to be able to love and to forgive others, as God wants us to do. In this sense, God's dem.and is but the flip side of God's gift. And not the least of the ways in which we accept God's gift is by obeying God's demand that we forgive one another as God has forgiven us all.

6. I resent noisy fundamentalists hijacking the name "Chl'istian" and wonder 7.uhether thetj don't do more harm than good in communicating the Christian gospel.

The question here, I take it, is this: Is it possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the Christian gospel?

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My answer-again unhesitatingly-is, Yes, it certainly is possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the gospel. I'm assuming, naturally, that what is meant in context by "hijacking the name 'Christian!!' is claiming explicitly or implicitly that one's own way of being Christian is the only way rightly so named. But you'll have noted, I'm sure, that both my reformulation of the question and my answer to it allow for the possibility-which I trust the questioner, also, would wish to allow for-that "noisy fundamentalists" are by no means the only, even if, perhaps, the noisiest, Christians who make or imply any such exclusivistic claim.

More than this, however, I will not say here by way of responding to the question, since it is one of the questions close enough in meaning to a question I responded to at some length last year that I have no hesitation in referring all of you to that question and to my response. The question I refer to is Question 3 (on pp. 7-11 of my written answers): How does one express \[one's\] faith to others when "Christian" has been kidnapped and 110\[W\] means a very tUZTTOW vieu)?

7. Many "fundamental Christians seek the Kingdom of God as a physical place after death. Many wlw attend mainline churches also struggle with the concept of what occurs after death and haw our living "now" impacts what happens "then." Can you speak to your understanding of "The Kingdom of God" and its impact on us as a people of faith and/or the emphasis the Christian religion should place on "the afterlife' "?

This, as anyone who was here last year may have guessed, is the other question I take to be close enough in meaning to a question I responded to at length then that an extended answer now hardly seems called for. So I simply refer the questioner and all of the rest of you to Question 6 and my response thereto (on pp. 17-21 of my written answers). Whereas that question asked, "Would you like to speak about the afterlife?" (italics added), the present question asks whether I can speak about it. And, of course, I should like to think that what I said in answering the earlier question is sufficient evidence that I indeed can-that I am able to speak about the afterlife, however adequately.

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But you perhaps noted that there's one thing the current question asks about that I did not specifically go into in my response a year ago--namely, how I understand the concept term, "the Kingdom of God." So just a brief further word on my understanding of how "the Kingdom of God" is understood by normative Christian witness and an adequate Christian theology.

The Greek term translated by our English phrase, "the Kingdom of God," is, as is said, "systematically ambiguous,1t in that it can express both of two different, if also closely related, in fact, correlative, concepts. It can thus refer both to the rule or dominion exercised by God and to the reign or domain over which God rules. On my understanding of how these two concepts are to be used normatively by Christian witness and theology, the rule or dominion of God is simply God's pure, unbounded, all-encompassing love of all things, whereby anything that is becomes possible both in principle and in fact and whereby anything that is is really real and of abiding significance. Correlatively, then, God's reign or domain is simply all things--everything whatsoever, both possible and actual, that is embraced or encompassed by God's love.

So, on my understanding, to ask, as the questioner does, about the "impact" of "the Kingdom of God" on us as a people of faith, is to ask about nothing else than the "impact" of God's boundless, all-embracing love on us as people who trustfully accept God's love and loyally live accordingly, loving God and all that God loves, which, of course, is everything-and everyone. In the same way, to ask about "the emphasis the Christian religion should place on 'the afterlife'" can only be to ask about the emphasis Christians should place on God's all-encompassing-and never-ending-Iove, for to be embraced everlastingly by that love is, as I understand it, the only "afterlife" that Christians have either the right or the responsibility to emphasize.

8. If you have been taught that intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith, why is it that it seems a magical incantation and not really faith-especially when nothing happens?

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This question raises several important theological issues-from What is the right course to follow when what you've been taught proves to be either patently false or unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless? to What is really faith, as distinct from magic? and, not least, What is the point of intercessory prayer if, on at least some understandings of it, it seems to be quite pointless and/ or a matter of practicing magic instead of really living by faith? Obviously, we could spend our entire time this evening on anyone of these issues-to say nothing of the others the question also raises. So I shall respond to it by saying only a few things about just one of them-leaving it to the subsequent discussion to bring out anything else that can and should be said to respond to the question.

The issue to which I shall speak is the third I specifically mentioned: What is the point of intercessonj prayer? The issue of the point of prayer is probably most commonly raised when persons ask, Does prayer work? and, in the case of intercessoT'j prayer, Does petitioning God on behalf of others work? The answer the questioner confesses to having been taught-along, I suspect, with many of the rest of us-was, "Yes, intercessory prayer works if you have enough faith and keep on praying." But wherein, exactly does the working of prayer consist? Supposing that, if one has enough faith, one's prayers for others will work, what would be the evidence that, in point of fact, one has had enough faith and that one's intercessory prayers have worked? Would the evidence be that the others for whom one had prayed actually received what one had asked for on their behalf? And is this why, when "nothing happens," as the questioner puts it, it seems that one's incessant intercessory prayers haven't worked and are therefore pointless and/ or just a magical incantation?

'If the answer is, Yes, then the underlying theological issue, dearly, is what is the point of intercessory prayer. If it's not effective as, in William James's memorable words, "an effort to lobby in the courts of the Almighty for special favors," then w"hat, exactly, is its point, and why do we continue to engage in it and to enjoin one another (not to mention bringing up our children!) to do so? If intercessoT'j prayer is not a reliable means of getting what we want, what good is it?

There's an old position on this issue that I take to be--or, at least, to point

to--the right theological position; and I want now briefly to develop it by way of