I am Charles Halton, a biblical scholar, theologian, and Episcopal priest. I have spent my career asking what happens when we stop explaining away the strange, vulnerable, fully-present God of the biblical text and start actually embracing that kind of god. What if divine limitation is not an embarrassment to be smoothed over by philosophical theology, but the very thing that makes God capable of genuine relationship with the world?
That question drives everything I write, preach, and teach.
My book A Human-Shaped God: Theology of an Embodied God — winner of the 2024 Grawemeyer Award in Religion — is the first book in a series that takes this question seriously. It argues for a God who grieves, relents, and experiences emotion. This picture of God is not a primitive anthropomorphism to be corrected, but a profound theological claim the church has been too timid to inhabit.
The conversation is underway. Come find out where it leads.
Here are a few of my writings that are accessible online:
Seduction on the Threshing Floor, Bible Odyssey
Following Merton into a ‘Useless Life’ in Bearings Online
What’s So Bad About Original Sin? in The Los Angeles Review of Books
The First Hundred Days in The Los Angeles Review of Books
Sterilizing the Bible, The Marginalia Review of Books