A Middle Way Between Theodicy
and Antitheodicy
By Mark Waters
Amipotence provides a potential middle way between theodicy and antitheodicy.
Introduction
Concern with the problem of evil is ubiquitous in Thomas Jay Oord’s impressive writing corpus. Oord’s recent book, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, cuts the Gordian Knot of David Hume’s trilemma, explained below, by slicing out omnipotence. Omnipotence is replaced with amipotence (love-power). My claim in this brief essay is that amipotence provides a potential middle way between theodicy and antitheodicy.
Theodicy and Antitheodicy
Readers of this analysis will be familiar with the concept of theodicy, the attempt to justify God in light of evil and suffering. David Hume, acknowledging the influence of Epicurus, asked, “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then [God] is impotent. Is [God] able, but not willing? Then [God] is malevolent. Is [God] both able and willing? Then where does evil come from?”1
Since the Holocaust and specifically since the 1998 publication of Zachary Braiterman’s (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought, an increasing number of Jewish and Christian theologians have rejected theodicies in favor of antitheodicy.[1] These thinkers repudiate the central line of thought that God allows suffering in the service of a greater good. For example, human free will is maximally good. Thus, God imparts free will despite the fact that it can cause suffering. Or God created the world in such a way that struggle is inevitable because it is required for human maturing, growth, and loving, a view that John Hick called “soul making.”[2]
Antitheodicists are repulsed by assertions that free will, soul making, or other teleological goods allegedly resulting from the conditions that contribute to suffering, can suffice to explain gratuitous or horrendous evil. Do free will or soul making render the Holocaust, the absurdity of a child’s terminal cancer, or the devastation of tsunamis worth it in the grand scheme of things? Indeed, positing a good teleological outcome as an explanation for God’s alleged allowance of such events is deemed problematic at best and cruel at worst by antitheodicists. Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart penned a scathing critique of theodicy in The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami? Responding to the idea that suffering and loss are part of “a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things,” Hart wrote that claiming this greater good “requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of—but entirely by way of—every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; … It is a strange thing indeed to seek peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome.”[3]
Sarah K. Pinnock, Professor of Contemporary Religious Thought at Trinity University, compares theodicists to torturers. She asserts that theodicists, like torturers, assume that suffering serves worthwhile goals. She does, however, admit a moral difference between theodicists and torturers in the contrasting pursuits of ethically admirable goals vis-à-vis authoritarian control.[4]
Although theodicists and antitheodicists are at an impasse, a small number of theologians implicitly provide a middle-way whether or not they make this specific claim or use the term antitheodicy. Theologians of the suffering of God such as Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann as well as process theologians such as John Cobb, David Ray Griffin, and Philip Clayton are potential examples. Oord is one of these theologians. His theological reflections on amipotence create this middle way more clearly than other theologians whom I have read.
Amipotence
Oord coined amipotence, derived from ami (love) and potens (power), “to stress the priority of love over power in God” (120). Thus the central methodological criterion of his theodical work problematizes the binary between love and power.[5] Oord’s prioritization of love stands in contrast to other theodicies that implicitly or explicitly prioritize power. Even though free will, soul making, and best of all possible worlds theodicies claim that God creates these conditions out of love, the implicit emphasis of these lines of thought is on what God does or does not do to stop suffering. Doing, particularly in the form of coercion or control, is an exercise of power.
Love works differently. God’s love is demonstrated, according to Oord, in essential kenosis understood as self-giving or self-emptying love (Philippians 2:5-11). God, in God’s essence, is self-giving love and suffers with creation. Moreover, God cannot do anything that is not consistent with God’s self-giving, kenotic love. This means that instead of exercising controlling or coercive power (implied by omnipotence), God works uncontrollingly, by persuading and luring humans toward actions that are best for all involved (amipotence). God does not allow evil because God cannot stop it coercively or singlehandedly. Oord presents God as an omnipresent spirit and, therefore, incorporeal. If my child is about to run in front of a car, I have a physical body capable of stopping the child. Being incorporeal, God cannot do so. God would need my cooperation or that of another physical being to stop the child. The uncontrolling nature of love combined with incorporeality means, therefore, that God needs creaturely cooperation in order to act in the physical realm. God cannot stop evil singlehandedly.[6]
The preceding claims are supported by the further claim that love is essential to God, biblically supported by 1 John 4:8 and 16. So, God’s limitation in the exercise of power is ontologically essential, not voluntary or self-chosen. God cannot act outside of God’s essential nature of love. “[God] remains faithful—for [God] cannot deny [Godself]” (II Timothy 2:13).[7]
A Middle Way
At least three aspects of traditional theodicy contribute to the impasse between theodicy and antitheodicy. In this final section, therefore, I will explain how amipotence and its broader implications satisfy each aspect of the impasse and, consequently, create a middle way. The first and most significant aspect is that theodicies, as explained previously, justify God by positing a greater good that is actualized by God allowing, causing, or otherwise not preventing evil or suffering. In this scenario, sufferers become a means to the end of a greater good rather than inherently valuable ends in themselves. Pinnock protests, “every person is a moral and spiritual being, and therefore the suffering of others should never be viewed as the means to an end.”[8] With amipotence, God does not grant freedom or create conditions that lead to soul making, for instance, as means to a greater end. God’s amipotence is not “a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things,” to reprise Hart.[9] This aspect of amipotence deconstructs the most significant obstacle to a middle way between theodicy and antitheodicy, namely a greater good that allegedly justifies suffering. Oord’s claim of amipotence means that human beings (or all creation) and their suffering are not means to other ends but are, rather, ends in themselves as objects of God’s love. Humans and God may cooperate and co-create to achieve good ends in and through suffering, but suffering and its causes are not means to these ends.
A second aspect of the rift between theodicists and antitheodicists is apologetics. Theodicies, especially when presented in a spirit of apologetics, are more focused on justifying God than on the condition of the sufferer. Readers might respond, “Of course, theos plus dike literally mean the justification of God.” True. But ironically, the God being justified, the God who is love, cares more about the sufferer than about being justified. Justification is a human apologetic need, not a need or desire of God. Consequently, in this case, I am problematizing the binary between apologetics, on the one hand, and faith-seeking-understanding on the other. My point is that a theodical impulse should be motivated by faith-seeking-understanding, not by apologetics. Apologetics often seem to arise from the insecurities of the apologist rather than anything substantive about God. Antitheodicists will not be satisfied, and rightfully so, as long as the focus of theodicy is primarily on justifying God to the neglect or minimization on the lived experience of suffering. A middle way deprivileges an apologetic focus on God and, as discussed below, privileges the sufferer. Oord certainly focuses on God; indeed amipotence is specifically about God. But he does not do so to the neglect of suffering persons. Plus, his God-talk does not appear to be rooted in underlying theological insecurities. His focus could be categorized as pastoral paired with faith-seeking-understanding, not as apologetics.
The deprivileging of a focus on the justification of God naturally leads to the third and final aspect that I will affirm, already alluded to above. A middle way between theodicy and antitheodicy requires an intentional and sustained focus on persons who suffer. Oord’s pastoral compassion regarding the lived experience of suffering comes through clearly in his work, especially in The Uncontrolling Love of God. This volume is filled with real-life accounts of heart wrenching suffering, thereby instituting a middle-way with the lived, before and during reflection on the nature of God.[10]
Conclusion
During a debate with Richard Dawkins, Oxford philosopher emeritus Richard Swinburne said that the Holocaust “gave Jews a wonderful opportunity to be courageous and humble.”[11] This kind of privileged, ivory tower, and ultimately cruel speculation has no place when dealing with the tragedy of suffering. No wonder antitheodicists reject theodicy as typically constructed. Thomas Jay Oord provides a helpful middle way between these often irreconcilable theological approaches to the problem of evil.
Bio: Mark Waters is a Professor of Religion and the Chair of Humanities, Religion, and Social Sciences at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. Formerly Baptist, now Episcopalian, Waters earned his MDiv and PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. His research interests include interfaith studies, faith and science, and queer theology.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
I appreciated Mark Waters’s essay, which presents amipotence as a middle way between theodicy and antitheodicy. He rightly critiques traditional theodicies that claim God permits evil for some greater good. Many find this view troubling, as much suffering—genocide, abuse, tragic loss—seems to serve no justifiable purpose. Waters proposes amipotence as an alternative that neither justifies evil nor dismisses suffering. It avoids appeals to divine plans that supposedly require pain and resists the cold detachment often found in apologetics. Instead, amipotence offers a relational, loving view of divine power—one that honors victims’ pain and provides genuine pastoral compassion amid tragedy.
For more on Oord’s view on lived experience and God as experiencer, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Zachary Braiterman, (God) after Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 31. Note that Braiterman coined the term antitheodicy.
[2]. John Hick. Evil and the God of Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1978. https://archive.org/details/evilgodoflove0000hick_q3o1/page/n1/mode/2up., accessed May 24, 2024.
[3]. David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 98-99.
[4]. Sarah K. Pinnock. “The Justification of Suffering: Holocaust Theodicy and Torture.” In Losing Trust in the World. Leonard Grob and John Roth, ed. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2017), 123
[5]. Admittedly, love and power do not have to be binary opposites. But this binary is so entrenched in the history of Christian theological reflection that it is legitimate to treat it as a binary and problematize it.
[6]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 176.
[7]. Ibid. 167-175.
[8]. Sarah K. Pinnock, 2017, 123. Kant’s categorical imperative seems to stand in the background of this statement. Regarding the “means to an end” issue, I believe Pinnock is concerned, as am I, with gratuitous or horrific suffering. The pain of athletic competition, grueling hours practicing a musical instrument, long hours of study for one’s academic degree, and so on, exemplify suffering as means to ends that are justifiable and warranted.
[9]. Hart, 98.
[10]. Oord, 2015, 15-26.
[11]. James Franklin, “Antitheodicy and the Grading of Theodicies by Moral Offensiveness, https://philarchive.org/archive/FRAAAT-15, accessed May 24, 2024, 4.