Amipotence Versus Amorepotence, Oord Versus McCall
By Bradford McCall
My essentially kenotical God has an eternal nature marked by other-centered and other-empowering love. But I go beyond Oord’s view and somewhat corrects it.
It has often been said that scholars do not work in vacuum, and that any discovery or advance is met by two or three others at the same—or nearly the same—time. This is particularly true of myself and Thomas Jay Oord. He and I developed our ideas on kenosis being essentially a self-offering in the late 2000s (2008–), and now we have developed our conceptions and elaborations of love as being essentially based either on a French/Latin root, Ami-, or (in my case) an Italian root/prefix (Amore-) at nearly the same time.
After reviewing the root meaning of the possible sources for the prefix ami-, however, I do not believe any of them are strong enough to convey what Oord intends for them to do without doing violence to the word meaning itself. This asseveration of my own means, then, that his choice of prefixes is weak. Ami– simply does not convey forcefully enough the sense of adoration and the sum of compassion and impassion, ardor and fervor, zeal and vehemence that the term amipotence would need to convey in order to substantiate the high degree of affection and feelings of “lean-toward” and “lean-to” that any concept of love must needs convey in order to comprise the range of the biblical senses of love.
I thus declare definitively that amipotence is, in the end analysis, too weak a word to encompass all that Oord desires for it to express and communicate as a replacement for the similar term omnipotence. Do not get me wrong: Oord’s concept of amipotence is a helpful corrective to the many impotent depictions of love that are on tap today. In no small manner, Oord is correct in stating that it is hard to exaggerate the benefits of saying God is not omnipotent. That said, however, I nevertheless view his replacement for omnipotence—that is, amipotence—to still be too weak to comprise and embody the fullness of a distinctively Christian typology of love. Pointedly, the root word ami– means “friend, lover, beloved” in old French, which is further derived from the older Latin amicus, meaning “friend.” From this meaning it is easy to discern how English derived the terms “amiable,” and “amicus.” “Amiable,” for example, can be understood to refer to someone who is full of love, affection, and friendliness towards others. Indeed, the word “amiable” means friendly and likable, or having a pleasant and good-natured personality. The root word of “amiable” is “ami-,” which can—but not always—mean “love.” Therefore, “amiable” can be understood as someone who is full of love, affection, and/or friendliness towards others.
While I appreciate the recovery of various endowments of meaning for “loving power” by Oord to the term amipotence, I sincerely assert that he would have been better served in following my suggestions from my 2023 work in which I argue for the related but more power-packed term amorepotent. In advocating for the terminology of amorepotent, I note that it is a term based on the Latin prefix “amor-,” which openly and bluntly refers to a love affair between two entities. In fact, it refers more strongly to a jilted lover in a love affair, with all that it entails existentially. It also could refer to an “amorous” relationship. Interestingly, it is the Latin name for the Greek god Cupid. Words derived from the Latin amor include “amorous,” which refers to an inclination toward (a leaning into) or display of love; “paramour,” which refers to a lover, especially the illicit partner of a married person; and “enamored,” which refers to a relation marked by foolish or unreasoned fondness.
It is important to stress that the meaning of love for Oord is wrapped up with his denial of omnipotence as a predicate of God. For Oord, God is as powerful as he can be, but that power is conditioned or limited by his nature being constituted by love. Not just any concept of love, but by self-giving love instead. This self-giving love always empowers the “other,” and thereby elevates the other to the fore in the relation between God and entities. With the death of omnipotence, we need an alternative to explain what God does, and a view that fits our experience, reason, and scripture. Something better is born, according to Oord, to displace the death of omnipotence. For Oord, amipotence replaces omnipotence. But I do not think amipotence is robust enough to replace omnipotence. Perhaps my own amorepotence, however, is.
Amipotence combines two Latin words ami and potens. The first word means “love,” and the second refers to “power.” Oord coined this word to stress the priority of love over and above power in God’s nature. Oord explains this word by noting that with it, divine love (ami) comes logically and conceptually prior to divine power (potens). Divine love preconditions and governs divine power. Love comes first. In so doing this, we are wise to believe God is necessarily loving, because it is God’s eternal and unchanging nature to love. Amipotence agrees with John Wesley when he says, “God is often styled holy, righteous, wise . . . [but] he is said to be love: intimating that this is . . . his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.”[1]
According to Oord, we best define the love in amipotence as acting intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being. This definition applies to both divine and creaturely love. The love God expresses, in other words, acts with intention, relates with others, and aims to promote flourishing. And because love is inherently uncontrolling, divine love does not control. As such, it is inherently the case that love cannot be omnipotent. And because love is inherently uncontrolling, neither divine nor creaturely love controls.[2]
With the demise of omnipotence, we need a replacement. Oord proposes amipotence, which assumes uncontrolling love comes conceptually first in God’s nature, logically prior to and therefore characterizing divine power. It has the advantage of solving the problem of evil, accounting for God’s failures to rescue, solving the problem of selective miracles, and overcoming numerous obstacles to belief. For Oord, amipotence was the primary but not the only force at the creation of our universe and the primary but not the only force throughout evolutionary history. Amipotence affirms the existence of a powerful God whose universal influence is uncontrolling love. Amipotence better fits the biblical witness and avoids the countless qualifications omnipotence requires. Amipotence overcomes the problem of evil, which is the main reason many say they can’t believe God exists. Omnipotence is dead. But amipotence or amorepotence can live. I prefer the latter over the former.
In contradistinction to Oord, I seek to illustrate the notion that God’s kenotically-donated amorepotent love is a synergistic symbiosis enacted through the Spirit of creativity that achieves greater evolutionary results combined than either aspect of the symbiosis alone. I picture this Oord- and Wojtyla-influenced depiction of my own as love that is “kenotically-donated” and “amorepotent,” which onsets an evolving fertility, most proximately of which is a result of the panentheistic relationship of God and world. This panentheistic relationship was initially wrought by the kenotical donation of God’s very self through the Spirit of contingency into chaotic matter eons ago, as I established in McCall, “Kenosis of the Spirit into Creation” (McCall 2008). Further, this panentheistic relation is now continually sustained and upheld by the repetitive impartation of his very self—through imbibification of the Spirit—into the natural world (McCall 2020a, particularly chapter 8). I further argue that God not only gives us love itself, but also himself in the very act of love.
Further, in characterizing love as self-giving, I once again draw attention to the fact that God gives of himself (liberally) to his creation and the entities comprising creation. He imparts or “imbibifies” part of himself to it and them, both, in a “kenotical” (i.e., a “self-giving,” a “self-donated,” or an “infilling”) manner, as particularly highlighted in McCall 2019b. Indeed, I argue in this chapter for a notion of love that is kenotically-donated, self-giving, creative, amorepotent (as per McCall 2023, particularly chapter 3), and uncontrolling (cf. Oord 2015). In so doing, I aim at substantiating that kenotically-donated, self-giving, creative, uncontrolling, and amorepotent love is empowering of the “other” and allows for the interactivity of matter and the godhead, since it is principally pneumatologically (i.e., Spirit) derived and based upon an imbibification of matter with the Spirit of God, which onsets the panentheistic orientation between God and the world.
Notably, the term “imbibification” is a word coined by me to refer to the process regarding the descent of the Spirit into matter, which causes the Spirit to be thereby embedded within nature, and thereafter be embodied within it as well (cf. McCall 2021b, particularly chapter 3; see also McCall 2017d, 221–24). Thereafter, marked by the embeddedness of Spirit, which is the agent of contingency within evolution, the natural world progressed in a serpentine manner into the advancement toward greater complexity, of which Homo sapiens sapiens are the pinnacle (at present, anyway) (cf. McCall 2021b, chapter 4). In fact, God’s world is teeming with randomness. It is, I like to say, smothered in contingency. As such, it is marked by contingentist entities, which are themselves marked by contingency. Things do not happen according to a divine plan (cf. McCall 2017d, 222). Rather, there is always some semblance of absolute chance in the world, and thus at any time, an element of pure chance survives (cf. McCall 2019a: 133–42). God intends for entities to cooperate with his kenotically-donated amorepotent love (McCall 2019a: 142; cf. McCall 2023).
As a contingentist, my essentially kenotical God (cf. McCall 2020b: 275–91), who has an eternal nature marked by other-centered and other-empowering love (see McCall 2019b; cf. McCall 2020b: 276), is consistent with Thomas Jay Oord’s portrayal of an uncontrolling God (see Oord 2015), but it goes further and somewhat corrects it. Uncontrolling love, as the contingentist Oord likes to say, necessarily provides freedom and agency to each species within the natural world. This is especially true with regard to humans, with God working to empower and inspire them toward well-being and wholeness (cf. Oord 2015, 94), to which I add the furtherance complexity, relationality, and beauty in varied and multifarious forms, along with the extension of diversity and increases of multiplicity (McCall 2019b: 284). Notably, I have coined the term “contingentist” to directly refer to someone who emphasizes contingency in his or her philosophy of bios (life) (cf. McCall 2021).
In this essay, I have sought to illustrate the notion that God’s kenotically-donated, amorepotent love is a synergistic symbiosis with the natural world enacted through the Spirit of contingency and creativity that achieves greater evolutionary results combined than either aspect of the symbiosis alone (cf. McCall 2019c: 337–50). This assertion means, then, that God’s kenotically-donated, amorepotent love is both productive of emergent entities and effectual for the derivation of greater complexity within those entities in the natural environ. This kenotically-donated, amorepotent love onsets an evolving fertility, which most proximately is a result of the panentheistic relationship of God and world (cf. McCall 2021a, particularly chapter 5). This panentheistic relationship was initially wrought, I aver, by the kenotical-donation of God’s very self through the Spirit into chaotic matter eons ago, and is now continually sustained and upheld by the repetitive impartation of his very self—through imbibification of the Spirit—into the natural world (cf. McCall 2019b).
Bio: Bradford McCall possesses a B.S. in Biology: Georgia Southwestern St. University [2000]; four Master’s in Religion and Philosophy (M.Div: Asbury Theological Seminary [2005]; MA, Church History and Doctrine: Regent University [2011]; MA, Systematic Philosophy: Holy Apostles College and Seminary [2017]; and one PhD in Comparative Religion from Claremont School of Theology [2022]. He is the author of nearly fifty peer-reviewed articles and seven books.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Bradford McCall has previously reflected on kenosis and divine love, developing his own term for God’s power: amorepotence. He advocates for this unique language to express God’s loving activity. While I respect his contribution, I don’t see a significant difference between his concept and my own. The core ideas we present—of divine power grounded in love—seem remarkably similar. Ultimately, our perspectives align more than they diverge. The primary distinction lies in our choice of terminology, not in theological substance. It appears we’re articulating the same vision of God’s power, each with a preferred way of naming it.
For more on Oord’s view of amipotence, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1] John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on the New Testament (New York: Lanes and Scott, 1850), 1 John 4:8. For a scholarly overview of Wesley’s theology, see Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace (Nashville, Tenn.: Kingswood, 1994).
[2] As an open and relational theologian, I join Oord in contending that God knows all that is knowable. What is knowable includes what has occurred in the past, what is occurring in the present, what is possible for the future, and all forms or eternal objects.