Perfect Passivity

By Daniel A. Dombrowski

God’s receptivity is just as important as God’s activity.

The greatest impediment to getting a fair hearing for theism from religious skeptics in the contemporary world is the notorious problem of evil. Further, the greatest impediment to getting a fair hearing for process or neoclassical theism, in particular, is opposition to divine omnipotence in the process view. These two impediments are related: When classical theists criticize neoclassical theists by defending the doctrine of divine omnipotence, they make theism, in general, less believable to many reflective people. This is because, as Thomas Jay Oord correctly argues in The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, belief in divine omnipotence makes it impossible to respond adequately to the problem of evil.

The purpose of the present short article is to offer some friendly amendments to Oord’s view, with which I largely agree. Specifically, I would like to put in a word for a dipolar concept of God, in contrast to the monopolar concept of God found in classical theism. On the classical view, God is permanent but not changing, being and not becoming, active and not passive, etc. That is, on the classical view, only one pole in these pairs of contrasting terms is attributed to God. On the dipolar view, by partial contrast, God is both permanent and changing in different aspects of the divine nature, both being and becoming, both active and passive. For example, on the dipolar, process view God permanently exists, but at each moment in that existence God is constantly changing in response to creatures.

The roots of the dipolar view are deep in that they go back to Plato, specifically to his dialogue Sophist (247e). Here Plato claims that anything that exists has a certain power or dynamis, a view with which Oord agrees (25-26, 39, 53-55—numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Oord’s book), along with other dipolar, process theists like Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. It should be noted that the power exhibited by each existent might be one of two types: the active power to influence others in contrast to the passive power to receive influence from others. Unfortunately, Plato says that each existent exhibits one or (eite) the other, but he should have said that each existent exhibits both active and (kai) passive power.

The reason why this is important is that the God of classical theism is pure activity with no receptivity whatsoever, an unmoved mover. This rejection of divine passivity and divine change threatens what is most distinctive and most admirable about God: divine love. That is, the “love” attributed to God by classical theists is not even remotely analogous to human love, where one willingly receives influence from the one who is loved. Here Oord is correct to reject the idea of God as a monopolar, unmoved being and to defend the concept of God as the most moved mover (20). It might be added that God is the most and best moved mover.

If I understand Oord correctly, he is generally a dipolar, process theist in that what makes God so great is both the divine power to influence all others in the best way possible and the divine power to be influenced by all others in the best way possible. And he is correct to emphasize that in the biblical tradition there is no evidence of God being all-powerful (pantodynamis) because an all-powerful being would entail that no other beings existed with powers of their own. But there are other beings in existence that exhibit both active and passive powers.

I say that Oord is generally a dipolar theist because he does claim that God is affected by the creatures (122), is receptive to creaturely activities (140), and is (in Whiteheadian fashion) the fellow-sufferer who understands (98-101). But for every reference to divine passivity in Oord’s book there are many more references to divine activity. I think I understand the reason why. After doing a masterful job of dismantling the concept of omnipotence, Oord realizes that he will be asked by the classical theist the following question: what exactly does your God do? (119). Although I agree with what Oord says in response to this question in his claim that the neoclassical God can nonetheless do “mighty deeds,” so as to avoid the charge of divine impotence (especially 36-39), I think it is also important to emphasize the passive power to receive, if only because the strictly permanent, strictly active, unmoved mover God of classical theism receives nothing.

Consider the following ascending scale of receptivity: the miniscule power of a single-celled organism to receive influence from its environment, the much more significant power of a nonhuman animal with a central nervous system to receive influence from others due to its sensory organs and memory, and the incredibly more developed power of a rational human being to change and to respond appropriately to the evidence received from others, especially evidence of fellow creatures’ suffering.

One might think that a perfect being would exhibit even more receptivity than a human being, especially if this perfect being is also omnibenevolent, in contrast to human beings who exhibit benevolence only intermittently and in a manner mixed with egoistic concerns. But the classical theist sees God as a strictly permanent being who is uninfluenced by others and who exhibits even less responsiveness to the creaturely environment than a single-celled organism, much less than a nonhuman animal with a central nervous system or than a rational human being with developed perceptual abilities and moral sensitivity. Of course, classical theists say God cares for creatures, but it is hard to make sense of how they can say this consistently given their monopolar concept of God. Oord is correct to be suspicious here.

My only wish is that for every time when Oord understandably says that God’s doing is analogous to ours (e.g., 130), he would also remind us that God’s receiving is analogous to ours, but to the nth degree, of course. Or again, for every time when Oord legitimately mentions God’s powerful activity (e.g., 139), it would be helpful to remind us of God’s powerful passivity. Oord is correct that God influences all (141), but the dipolar, process, neoclassical theist makes a genuine contribution to the lives of reflective theists in also emphasizing God’s ability to be influenced by all. It makes sense for Oord to repeatedly call attention to divine activity and creaturely response (143, et al.), but this is by no means incompatible with also calling attention to creaturely activity and divine response. I suppose I am putting in a plea for something closer to polar equality in dipolar theism. Oord’s amipotence requires this, I think.

The following two examples might be helpful. I suspect that everyone has had at least once the experience of being told by one’s conversation partner the following: you are not listening to me! At that point in the exchange there is an incentive to work hard at passively taking in what one’s interlocutor is saying. That is, some people are better listeners than others. An omnibenevolent being would be That Than Which No Greater Listener Can Be Conceived. Excellent passivity is what one would want in a perfect being, not the utter lack of passivity found in the classical theistic view.

The second example is from music. One can imagine a fellow music lover calling one’s attention to the counterpoint in a difficult symphony that one had not heard before or to the way Taylor Swift modulates her voice in one of her songs. These sorts of examples could be multiplied endlessly. I offer these examples as pushback to the classical theist who persists in asking about what a process or neoclassical God does on the analogy of what morally sensitive and aesthetically perceptive human beings do. That is, receiving influence from others is a type of “doing” that is just as important as exerting influence on them.

One last point on a different topic. I was surprised at the end of Oord’s book (150) that he talked about the victory of good over evil, both now and in the future. I would like to hear more about this from Oord, but I confess that I am a bit skittish about raising triumphalist expectations, especially given the excellent critique Oord has offered of the concept of omnipotence. As I see things, any victory of good over evil would have to be rendered consistent with the tragic sense of life found in Whitehead and Hartshorne that goes back to Aeschylus. At the very least, if something tragic has occurred in the past (as it obviously has), then such tragedy continues into the present for any being with a sharp memory who prehends it. And God’s memory, on the process theist’s view, is the very best, both in terms of its temporal scope and its qualitative acuity.

Bio: Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. He is the author of twenty-two books and over a hundred and ninety articles in scholarly journals. Among his books are Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2006); Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Daniel Dombrowski powerfully reminds us that God’s love involves not only active giving but also receptive receiving. What he calls dipolar, I have described as God’s essence and experience binate. But my label refers to God’s essence and experience rather than divine giving and receiving. Still, I fully embrace Dombrowski’s insights on divine love. His essay concludes by questioning the hope for good’s victory over evil. I explore this hope through God’s persuasive love in my essays on relentless love. I suspect Dombrowski will recognize how my claims there align well with his own emphasis, strengthening our shared theological perspective.

For more on Oord’s view of God the victor of love over evil, see this article.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.