Justice Seeking Amipotence
By Nancy R. Howell
Adding amipotence to theological vocabulary is an advance over omnipotence, yet justice is an undeveloped aspect of the term.
Words matter. Omnipotence carries a host of embedded traditions and meanings, but Thomas Jay Oord asks us to rename God’s power. With the name change comes a fresh yet familiar casting of what it means to exercise power. Amipotence recalls both the way Jesus Christ as the revelation of God exemplified power in his incarnate ministry and the philosophical view of power expressed in Open and Relational Theology.
Before Oord surprised us with a new name for God’s power, theologians and philosophers prepared the way with some persuasive ways of thinking about power. My first glimpse of what amipotence could be is found in the book God and the World by theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. Cobb described omnipotence as an irresistible power much like the power an artist imposes on clay. Amipotence agrees with Cobb that such controlling power by implication is responsible for all evil because God embodies absolute power over all creatures. In a breach of fairness and morality, the creatures are still accountable for their sins.[1]
As the father of four sons himself, Cobb illustrates how anemic coercive power can be. He asks us to imagine how fruitless compelling a son to attend school would be when trying to force the other children to attend at the same time and when compulsory attendance is no guarantee of learning. Cobb concludes that such power is an admission of complete powerlessness. Forcing behavior on children is a sign that one has already lost all control of them. Following his illustration of failed power, Cobb asks us to consider why anyone would attribute such a flawed, immoral, and ineffective kind of power to God.[2]
Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy extended my reflection on omnipotence. His metaphor helps readers picture different expressions of power, and the same point appears in two of his books. Modes of Thought was the first to associate one kind of power with “touchy, vain, imperious tyrants” who ruled the world’s empires and shaped religious images of gods as Dictators.[3] Whitehead contrasts this image of the powerful with those in Buddhist doctrines and Christian Gospels.[4]
Whitehead’s Process and Reality similarly contrasts the ruling Caesar, ruthless moralist, and unmoved mover with a gentler view of God. His words about early Christianity’s Galilean vision of God are moving and worth quoting:
It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.[5]
In these words, we read a transformed imaging of God that emphasizes love, a shift of metaphor that has shaped process theology (including John Cobb’s theology).
Controlling power is now replaced not by a passive and ineffectual love but by an active, immanent love operating in every creature. A direct connection between divine power and love appears in philosopher Charles Hartshorne’s Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, which says, “God’s power simply is the appeal of unsurpassable love.”[6] Such power is not coercive but is powerfully omnipresent. Like Oord, Hartshorne directly associates love and power, and perhaps we could even say that such an unsurpassable love represents God’s immanence among creatures and God’s transcendent nature.
The third influential source that affected my reflection on power is Bernard Loomer’s article “Two Conceptions of Power,” in which he contrasts human linear or unilateral power with relational power.[7] Linear power is equivalent to the controlling, manipulative, nonrelational, unaffected power of the tyrants so named in Whitehead’s philosophy. The alternative is Loomer’s relational power. Loomer writes about relational power in creaturely relationships, perhaps more as an inspiration than a normative practice. However, relational power has features that apply to both God and creatures.
Loomer describes relational power at length, but I will highlight selected features that have a bearing on my discussion of amipotence. One characterization of power is “power as being-influenced.”[8] Loomer asserts that unilateral power entails a refusal to be influenced by another, but relational power is a matter of strength because creatures express openness to others without losing a sense of self. Relational power is the capacity to be affected and even creatively transformed by encounters with others.[9]
Similarly, the divine power suggested by amipotence describes a God deeply affected by creatures and whose love is radical openness. Thomas Jay Oord emphasizes God’s empathy. Rather than a sign of weakness, the compassionate ability to “feel with” is a radical departure from divine impassibility, God’s attribute describing the divine unchanging nature as distinct from creatures. Oord envisions God as one who emotionally responds to human suffering and is changed by that experience.[10] The compassionate God is revealed in Jesus who wept at the death of his friend Lazarus and was moved by mourners’ outpouring of grief (John 11).
Returning to Loomer’s concept of relational power, a second feature is the nature of relationship itself. Relationships are not merely incidental encounters with others but are the experiences that constitute the people we are and will become. Loomer tells us that “the self doesn’t have experiences. The self is the experiences.”[11] Creatures are free and somewhat autonomous yet in a sense embody the experiences of societies, cultures, family, friends, animals, and others. How often have we confessed that we have become our parents or mirrored our sociocultural ethos? Loomer highlights that whether we have relationships is not the question; the question is what kind of relationships we will have. How relationships are engaged is critically constitutive of self.
Oord without question affirms the significance of God’s relationship with the world, and he does so when writing or speaking about the “divine essence-experience binate.”[12] The essence of God is constant and unchanging (immutable), but divine experience in encountering the world and its creatures is God-changing. God’s being and becoming are constituted by experiences that change and add to Godself. Oord carefully reminds us that creature-full encounters do not determine God entirely—not just because God has an unchanging essence but because God in the divine experience has the freedom to choose how God will love in response to creatures.[13] As I compare Loomer’s relational power with Oord’s theology, my point is to show the power of God/Love in relationship and to emphasize the radical reframing of power.
While my early reading about divine power and love prepared me for Oord’s coining of the term amipotence, I was pleasantly surprised by reading the revised way of speaking about God. Pluriform Love transformed Jesus’ kenosis (translated as “self-emptying” in Philippians 2:7) into a highly active act of God’s revelation of God’s love. In Oord’s interpretation, amipotence counters impotence with an active love constantly engaged in the world and quietly luring its creatures toward truth, beauty, goodness, and love. Such love lures rather than controls. Amipotence points toward divine power exercised lovingly.[14]
Oord’s The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence fleshes out divine amipotence again in contrast to omnipotence but does so by emphasizing what loving power can do. Amipotence is neither omnipotence nor impotence, according to Oord. Amipotence acts. Amipotence is enacted in God’s relationship with creatures who have both power and freedom themselves. Oord describes God’s love as omnipresent, everlasting, omniscient, necessary, and vulnerable to differentiate amipotence from creaturely love:
Divine love is universal and therefore differs in scope because only God is omnipresent. God’s love differs in duration and frequency because God loves everlastingly. Divine love differs in adequacy because God is omniscient and better knows what promotes well-being. Divine love is necessary because it’s God’s nature to love; creatures may or may not love. Divine love is perfectly sensitive and vulnerable because God is affected by all creation.[15]
Such is the greatest form of love we can imagine—a love that sounds familiar to human ears but is far beyond the human capacity to love. Amipotence is a love that makes God worthy of worship.
As much as I welcome and admire Oord’s concept of amipotence, some voices create concern about the focus on love. For example, Black liberation theologian James Cone indicts both White conservatives and liberals who portray Jesus as “a mild, easy-going white American who can afford to mouth the luxuries of ‘love,’ ‘mercy,’ ‘long-suffering,’ and other white irrelevancies.”[16] What’s at stake for Cone and the Black community? Why is the revelation of love in Jesus Christ offensive? Cone writes in the context of a dangerous and oppressive time for African Americans. When a more powerful God and Christ provide the hope of liberation, the image of a meek and mild Jesus as the revelation of God is just another oppressive theology.
Womanist theologian Delores S. Williams, however, proposes that for Black women, something else is at stake. She turns to the story of Hagar in Genesis 16:1-16 and 21:9-21, a source providing a more adequate theology of God’s power. Her interpretation of Genesis reminds us that God doesn’t omnipotently liberate the slave Hagar from bondage to Sarah and Abraham. Human initiative liberates.[17] Genesis narrates a story of God providing a way for Hagar to give birth safely to Ishmael and to survive rather than die in the desert. As Williams says, God makes a way out of no way, enabling survival and quality of life.[18]
Williams suggests a view of God’s power and interaction with the slave Hagar that might tempt us to say she comes closer to understanding divine power somewhat like amipotence, but coopting her theology ignores the key issue. What’s at stake for Williams is the oppression, suffering, and enslavement of Black women. Williams also acknowledges the agency of women like Hagar who have been colonized, enslaved, and disillusioned by the promise of divine liberation.
Listening to other theologians is not a digression. What’s at stake for Oord and other theologians as we hear Cone and Williams? We must remember to set our views of power in the context of privilege. Amipotence may not be a universal understanding of God’s power however well uncontrolling love fits the experience of many attracted to relational theology.
Words matter! I propose that the next discussion of amipotence acknowledge our encounter with Black experience and that of other oppressed persons. Can amipotence speak directly to justice alongside love, beauty, truth, and goodness? A quick answer might simply suggest that God’s activity and human power can align to bring about liberation and justice. However, I suspect that the task will be much more complex because we will need to be inspired by God’s amipotence. We will need deep empathy, persistent action, and inquisitive initiative to understand our context and privilege. In mirroring God’s amipotence, we can have hope in God’s justice and righteousness. As power is shaped by love, love must be expressed through justice.
Bio: Nancy R. Howell is Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion and Poppele Chair of Health and Welfare Ministries at Saint Paul School of Theology in Leawood, Kansas. Howell teaches contemporary theology on such topics as science and religion, immigration and theology, liberative theologies, and polarization and church leadership. Her research interest is primate behavior and theology.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
I loved how Nancy Howell used John Cobb’s old book, God and World, to connect with amipotence. That book shaped my early theological development. Nancy also highlights other influences on her thinking about divine power. While Bernard Loomer has influenced me less that Nancy, I find his work helpful. I appreciate Nancy raising questions of divine power in relation to African-American concerns. I believe amipotence can address the call for justice on race and oppression without reverting to omnipotence. However, her insights challenge me to develop a more detailed account of how amipotence aligns with justice and theological discourse.
For more on Oord’s view on liberation and revisionary postmodernism, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. John B. Cobb, Jr. God and the World (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), 89.
[2]. Ibid., 90.
[3]. Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 68.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corrected edition. (New York: Free Press, 1978), 343.
[6]. Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), 14.
[7]. Bernard Loomer, “Two Conceptions of Power,” Process Studies 6:1 (Spring 1976): 5-32.
[8]. Ibid., 17.
[9]. Ibid., 19.
[10]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (Nampa, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023), 99.
[11]. Loomer, 19.
[12]. Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being (Nampa, ID: SacraSage, 2022), 120. Also expressed in The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 100.
[13]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 126.
[14]. Oord, Plurifom Love, 172.
[15]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 122.
[16]. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 50th Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2023), 117.
[17]. Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), 4.
[18]. Ibid., 5.