Islamic Process Panentheism Offers a Deeper Perspective on Divine Action

By Jared Morningstar

While amipotence offers improvements over theologies of unilateral power, it risks presenting God as nothing more than a benevolent demiurge.

In The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence, Thomas Jay Oord provides a litany of Biblical and philosophical arguments for rejecting traditional formulations of Divine omnipotence, suggesting instead that theists would be better served by foregrounding love rather than power when thinking about both God’s essential nature and the relationship between God and creation. Oord’s arguments against omnipotence are compelling, and his alternative proposal of amipotence serves as an important corrective to decadent theologies which for many are no longer intellectually defensible nor existentially viable. In particular, emphasizing Divine love as a skeleton key for theologians and lay believers alike to interpret God’s activity in the world is an important contribution to contemporary theology. On this point I am in full agreement with Oord.

While Oord’s development of a theology of amipotence represents a poignant advance in theological discourse well worth careful consideration, I nonetheless believe his formulation falls prey to a number of conceptual errors—some which are shared by advocates of omnipotence and others which are particular to his proposal.

To set the stage, let us consider the notions of transcendence and immanence in theological thinking. Language of Divine transcendence points to those aspects of Divinity which are beyond or greater than creation, while language of Divine immanence points to aspects of Divinity which are analogous or accessible to creation. One way of framing Oord’s critique of omnipotence is that this doctrine overemphasizes God’s transcendence at the expense of God’s immanence, leading to incomprehensibility which theologians unhelpfully address by appealing to mystery. This point is well taken, but in formulating amipotence Oord risks overemphasizing the immanence of God at the expense of Divine transcendence.

While the uncontrolling power of Divine love is different from creaturely power in scope (God is always exercising this influence in relation to all creatures at all times and places) and quality (God’s power is always persuasive, never coercive and always oriented towards the best possible outcomes), it is ultimately no different in kind from creaturely power. As such, the amipotent God seems to be one being among others in a dynamic cosmos. A being of maximal loving influence, yes, but something essentially lesser than what theologians have in mind when describing God with language such as “the Ground of Being” or “Ultimate Reality.”

While invocation of transcendence and Divine mystery in contexts of either creaturely suffering or theological incongruities is indeed worthy of scorn, these ideas nonetheless have a positive utility as well. Notions of Divine transcendence connect with basic religious intuitions that suggest an unparalleled grandiosity of God and connect to experiences of awe and inspiration which form the impetus for religious worship in many contexts. While mystery is not entirely absent in Oord’s theology of amipotence—believers must nonetheless endeavor to intuit the loving influence of God in the world—I anticipate many traditional theists may find this perspective on the Divine too reified, too confined, or too creaturely. Or, more pointedly: How can we distinguish the amipotent God from a benevolent demiurge?

Whether a theology is excessive in emphasizing transcendence or immanence, conceptual issues subsequently arise when trying to understand the relationship between God and creation. While Oord rebukes proponents of omnipotence for retreating into obscurantism and hiding behind invocations of mystery, there is another sense in which these theologians are picturing God in very reified, anthropomorphic way, and I would venture that Oord’s theology of amipotence risks this same error—albeit from a different direction. I want to explore these issues in some depth and propose a solution: a more thoroughly panentheistic theology.

Let us first consider the typical concepts of power, will, and influence. Implicit in many notions of omnipotence is a certain understanding of power which presumes an agent who exerts external influence upon another. For example, when I play the piano, I use the agency of my body to perform physical actions on the instrument which produces certain intended sounds (assuming I am a decent piano player). Power can be benign or destructive: I may use my physical strength to help up a child who has fallen; an occupying military force may use violence to evict a family from their home. In either case, however, power is understood as an act by a discrete agent or collective which conditions external change in entities or environments. Basing one’s notion of Divine power upon such a perspective leads to a view of God as the ultimate puppet master—directing all events in creation from the outside with complete control.

Oord’s theology of amipotence differs from traditional views of Divine action by emphasizing persuasion and uncontrolling influence rather than unilateral causal power. However, while the quality of the relationship between God and creation is different, there is still a dichotomy here—influencer and influenced are external to one another. Oord’s theology is also distinct in that it emphasizes bidirectional influence: God feels the condition of creation and the hopes of all creatures in every moment and offers novel possibilities for goodness in response. Here, God is instead the ultimate orchestra conductor—non-forcefully guiding the whole with a responsive sensitivity and always working towards harmony and beauty.

While Oord’s presentation of uncontrolling love is a significant improvement upon theologies of unilateral, coercive Divine power, I would venture that both of these are founded upon too reified views of action, perhaps borne of the subject-predicate structure of our language.

Let us consider an alternative conception of power which does not lead to harsh dichotomies and allow this to serve as an initial metaphor for the interaction between God and creation. Take the example of a seed which grows into a large, lush tree. There is significant power and influence occurring in such a process: the very being of the plant grows and expands, new parts of the organism come into being, and its overall complexity increases. Yet to identify the self-organizing activity of the tree as either a coercive or persuasive force upon itself is logically incoherent. Instead, there is an organic emergence of dynamic life processes which include both parts (proteins, cells, roots, etc.) as well as the whole (the tree itself), all interrelating to contribute to the health maturation of the tree. I would venture that this organic, holistic, and self-organizing understanding of power is most applicable to God, especially in terms of thinking about God’s activity and relationship with creation.

Of course, this is an imperfect metaphor for theological purposes, as while a plant requires certain resources and a suitable environment for its organic life to develop, this is not the case for God. The reason this is not the case is the same reason there are theological problems with both omnipotent and amipotent perspectives on God’s power: there is nothing external to the Divine life.

The perspective I am outlining with this initial image can be called an organic or process panentheism. Panentheism is the theological perspective that God is in all of creation and all of creation is in God. It is a nondual theology which is distinct from pantheism in insisting that while God is fully present in all corners of the universe, God is not merely equivalent to the cosmos itself. God is always beyond any particular theophany in creation—even creation as a whole—even as God is disclosed in and through all existing things. Drawing from panentheistic theologies in my own Islamic tradition, I want to sketch a different relationship between God and creation.

In Islam, the Qur’an represents the primary point of entry for understanding God, as this revelation is viewed as a clear and complete self-disclosure from the Divine. In this scripture, one encounters myriad descriptions of God—the Compassionate (ar-Raḥmān), the Preserver (al-Ḥafīz), the One (al-ʾAḥad), etc. These are known as the asmāʾu llāhi l-ḥusnā, literally “the beautiful names of God” though also often referred to as “the ninety-nine names of God” to signify their abundance.

Muslim theologians, deeply committed to the central idea of Islamic monotheism known as tawḥīd (oneness of God), sought a way to reconcile not only the multiplicity of God’s attributes with this vision of radical unity, but also the multiplicity of creation itself. In philosophical Sufism, the school of Ibn ‘Arabi developed a perspective known as waḥdat al-wujūd—literally, “the unity of existence”—which offered a nondual, panentheistic solution that reconciled oneness and multiplicity.

From this perspective, God is the ultimately real, with the attributes being logical extensions of the Divine Essence. These particular attributes of God, in turn, are the archetypes out of which creation emerges. Rather than God creating from nothing or from some prime substance or chaos external to the Divine, God creates ex Deo—from God. A mountain, for example, is the instantiation of God’s attributes of the Vast (al-Wāsiʿ) and the Majestic (al-Jalīl), among others. The being, or existence, of the mountain is these Divine qualities—the mountain exists through participating in their reality.

As such, there is no force in the activity or creation of God: all of existence is myriad, technicolor theophany—self-disclosure—of the Divine nature expressed in different modes, concretized in particular beings throughout the flow of time. The cosmos is the organic life of God, not some creation external to Divinity.

I think this Islamic panentheism provides a more compelling model for Divine creation and activity than the material-mental monism Oord suggests. However, rather than opposing paradigms, I think these perspectives can actually be integrated with one another for a more complete picture. The material-mental monism provides a general account of how God and creation interface due to sharing these two aspects, while the panentheistic perspective gives hints at how God may be working in creation through instantiating self-disclosure of various Divine attributes.

The shortcoming of material-mental monism as a self-sufficient framework for contextualizing God’s interaction with the world is particularly evident when it comes to questions of causality. Oord suggests that “To use Aristotelean categories, an amipotent God acts as an efficient cause. God is part of the causal network of existence as one cause among others, albeit present to all others. God influences creatures in ways similar to how creatures influence.” (130) But without having clarified what the material dimension of God consists of, it is difficult to conceive how the amipotent God engages in efficient causality. Perhaps it is through the mental rather than material vector that this causality expresses itself, with human non-sensory perception of God representing this force in the context of our experience. If so, however, a much more detailed account is needed to explain how the mentality of creatures other than humans interacts with Divine influence to produce particular effects.

Later Oord suggests that “If God is the giver of life and existence, we would be wise to say the Spirit provides integrity, agency, self-organization, and freedom to all creation, depending on their complexity.” (146) To my ears this sounds closer to formal casualty than efficient causality, with God interacting with creation in a way that provides particular affordances and abilities to particular creatures, determined by their particular identity. Here, I think Oord’s language works better considered from a panentheistic perspective, where creation participates in the reality of particular Divine attributes—in this context, for example, the Living (al-Ḥayy).

More generally, I think Oord’s vision of amipotence works best seen from the perspective of final casualty. Amipotence is that force pervasive in all existence drawing creation towards goodness, beauty, and harmony—just like the force latent in the seed that allows for it to grow, mature, and complexify into a tree.

Thinking of amipotence situated in a broader process panentheistic perspective allows for important aspects of Divine transcendence to be preserved while rightly giving the attribute of love priority in understanding God’s interaction with creation. In this way, the trickier points of theodicy may be addressed without thus reducing God to merely a maximally powerful benevolent being alongside creation. Long live the ever-complexifying Divine self-disclosure of the amipotent God in and as creation!

Bio: Jared Morningstar is an independent scholar living in Madison, Wisconsin with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue. His work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the “meaning crisis,” among other things.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Jared Morningstar draws upon Muslim resources to question the ultimate power of amipotence. I fully embrace Morningstar’s characterization of the God I believe in as one power among others in a dynamic process. I don’t find the language of Ground of Being or other nonpersonal references helpful. Ultimately, I’m committed to the idea that God is loving, and love requires a personal lover. I worry that Morningstar’s view undermines the view of God as a loving personal actor. This action, as I see it is more than final or formal causation. God must be an efficient cause if engaging in giving-and-receiving love.

For more on Oord’s view of God as personal, see this article.

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