In this popular volume Professor Greg Boyd publishes a series of letters written over a two-year period between himself and his father. Boyd’s father at the time was not a believer – as a matter of fact he was a hardened skeptic. Boyd calmly explains the gospel, theology and apologetics to his father as he inches him closer and closer to a commitment to Christ. Ultimately his father receives the Lord.
End of story! Good book, right? Unfortunately not. For while Boyd often does an excellent job of handling difficult subjects, and while he says much that is true biblical, he nevertheless holds to, or is at least sympathetic toward, a number of errant theological viewpoints. He takes some strange views of Hell, leaving the door open for the annihilationist position (pp. 158-165). He is into pop-psychology (p. 65), and visualization (p. 187). His understanding of the Bible is weak in places (pp. 134, 143). But the real issue is his view of God. Letters from a Skeptic was one of the early polemics for Open Theism, and Boyd is one of its foremost statesmen. His understanding about what God cannot do and what God cannot know (pp. 24,26,27,30,33-37,45-48,121,124) is more than sad, it is heretical.