Williams's theology of love should be considered a classic expression of how someone inspired by the philosophical concerns of process philosophy and Christian faith might understand love, both human and divine. Given that process thought has proven especially helpful for many in the science and religion dialogue, one would do well to mine the chapters of The Spirit and the Forms of Love for gems to orient one's work in the interface between science and theology.

Williams reveals his purpose for writing The Spirit and the Forms of Love as his attempt to answer the question, "What is the meaning and truth of the Christian assertions that God is love, that love to God and the neighbor are the two great commandments, that fulfillment of human love depends upon God's action of reconciliation, and that the love of God is the ground of all hope?" (vii) When beginning to answer these questions, Williams turns to Christian scriptures. Although expressions of love in the Old Testament are diverse, Williams contends that the meaning of love therein is nothing other than the meaning of God's historical dealing with humanity. According to Williams, what Christians mean by love grows out of Jesus' history.

Williams offers three typologies to illustrate three major forms of love in the Christian tradition. The first is the Augustinian synthesis of the New Testament faith and the Neo-platonic vision. Its characteristic is the attempt to bring the various human and divine loves into an ordered structure. The second type is the Franciscan, which is expressed in the free, radical expression of love in a sacrificial life. The third type is the Evangelical way, which centers upon two notions: (1) the loves of God and humans are to be understood within the affirmation of salvation by grace alone, and (2) grace gives the individual a new sense of vocation to be a servant of God in the secular order.

Neo-Platonic metaphysics have unfortunately often undermined Christian attempts to conceptualize Christian love adequately. When the main structure of Christian theology was formulated in the creeds, "the biblical faith in God became fused with the Neo-platonic doctrine of God as absolute being" (17). When Augustine sought to combine the biblical vision with Neo-platonic metaphysics, he ascribed to God all power and perfection (as completeness). This meant that temporality, change, becoming, and passivity were be ascribed to God. Neo-Platonic metaphysics denies the possibility that human determinations can alter God's experience, and the notion that God's experience is unalterable contradicts the broad biblical witness of God's interacting love.

"What would it mean," Williams wonders rhetorically as he transitions to proposing a process metaphysics to replace Neo-Platonism, "to relate the Christian doctrine of God to a metaphysical outlook in which God's being is conceived in dynamic temporal terms?"(9) It would mean something very different - something more intelligible and biblical.

The "process" in process metaphysics designates this thought's indebtedness to a broad movement in modern thought that reconsiders metaphysical problems based on an evolutionary world-view and the temporal flow of experience. Williams avers that contemporary humanity is conscious of its radical historicity involving real freedom, possibilities yet unrealized, and an open-ended future that humans shape partly by their own decisions. Because of this and because the biblical God acts in a history where individuals have freedom, a philosophy should be championed that corresponds with general science, conceives of God in historical-temporal terms, and also accounts for creaturely freedom.

In broad terms, Williams defines process theology as a perspective supposing that God is joined with the world in the adventure of real history where God and creatures have freedom to act and respond. Crucial to Williams's work is his insistence that similarities must exist between divine and human love. The analysis Williams performs is based upon this hypothesis: Whatever is present in the inescapable structures of human experience must be present in ultimate reality. After coming to a working hypothesis that accounts for the elements of those inescapable structures of experience -- particularly the experience of love, one then asks about the implications this account has for a doctrine of God.

What, asks Williams, are the ontological conditions that human love requires and how are these conditions reflected in divine love? He suggests three conditions. First, individuals must be in relation. Love requires (1) that real individuals each bring to relationship something that no other can bring and (2) that those individuals possess the capacity to take into account another's unique individuality.

Second, love requires a degree of freedom in the one loving. All loves and lovers have a historical context and thus absolute freedom is impossible. Freedom is always qualified by the physical, emotional, and historical circumstances in which love exists. Furthermore, contends Williams, the very nature of love includes affirming and accepting the freedom of the other. "Nothing is more pathetic than the attempt to compel or coerce the love of another, for it carries self-defeat within it. That which is coerced cannot be love, hence in love we will that the other give his love freely" (116). If God wills to love, and, above all, if God wills to be loved, God cannot entirely determine the love of the other. God gives freedom to creatures in order that they may love.

Third, what has been said about freedom, action, suffering, and communication, implies the categorical condition Williams calls "causality." According to him, love is meaningless without causality. Love "must be the kind of action, with whatever coercion is involved, which so far as possible leaves the other more free to respond" (120).

Fourth and finally, love requires that individuals - including the divine individual -- be related. Loving not only requires a movement toward the other but also, says Williams, the capacity to be acted upon. Suffering is the language of feeling and of caring, and that is its importance for love. When humans love, then, they are a part of a history in which suffering is one condition of relationship. Divine love includes God "making himself vulnerable to receive into his being what the world does in its freedom," argues Williams, "and to respond to the world's actions. Process thought offers "a new metaphysical vision that embodies the conception of God as living, creative, and responsive to the world" (17).

The final chapters of the book are given to addressing particular issues that emerge in relation to the love scheme Williams proposes. Chapters address the incarnation, the atonement, self-sacrifice, sexuality, social justice, and the intellect.