Amipotence Versus the Psalms
By William Hasker
Amipotence, as described by Thomas Oord, leaves very little that can be done by God to affect what goes on in the world. This contrasts markedly with the picture of God’s actions that we find in the Psalms.
I am going to present what I suspect will be, in the context of the present volume, very much a minority report. I will argue that amipotence, as described by Thomas Oord, leaves little or nothing that can be done by God to affect what goes on in the world. In particular, amipotence conflicts with the picture of God’s actions that we find in the Psalms.
According to the doctrine of divine amipotence, what can God do to make a difference in the world? It is necessary to ask this question, because we are told a great deal about what God cannot do, and about why it is beneficial to say God cannot do these things. (The benefits chiefly concern the problem of evil: if God cannot perform an action so as to eliminate a certain evil from the world, God cannot be blamed for failing to do so.)
Now, Oord recognizes the need to give an account of the actions God can and does perform. Much of what he says, however, seems rather vague and may fail to satisfy us. All God’s actions are manifestations of his love—but what, specifically, does God do in order to manifest love? A somewhat more concrete answer is provided by his “five dimensions for solving the problem of evil.”[1] These dimensions are the empathetic, didactic, therapeutic, strategic, and sovereignty dimensions. Of these the didactic, therapeutic, and strategic dimensions are most helpful in suggesting specific sorts of things God does. He uses evil to teach us things, he heals those who are afflicted with evils, and he “strategically” co-operates with creatures in preventing or overcoming evil (see pp. 80-82). But we may still wonder, what precisely does God do in order to heal those who are suffering?
What are the “basic actions” God performs in doing this? Suppose, for instance, that a child is suffering from a life-threatening infection. Parents and physicians have done their best, but the prognosis is still grim. Why doesn’t God simply wipe out the disease organisms, allowing the child’s body to repair itself and return to health? It is at this point that the “sovereignty dimension” becomes crucial, and we learn something truly surprising: It is precisely because of God’s love that wiping out the germs is not an option.
God’s nature of love makes it impossible for God to withdraw, override, or fail to provide the freedom, agency, or basic existence of others. God’s giving existence to others also means God cannot usurp the law-like regularities—what many call the “laws of -nature”—we see at work in the world. Self-giving love is an aspect of God’s eternal nature, and God cannot deny this nature. Because of love, God must give (85).
Because of God’s love, God cannot discriminate between the value of the child’s life and that of the disease organisms! Frankly, this seems astonishing, very unlike what we would expect from love on the part of, for instance, the child’s parents. And if what God can do, in this and all other situations, is merely to maintain the laws of nature as they always operate, it seems as though God can never “make a difference” in the way most religious people have believed God does.
In fact, Oord does not want to say that God’s activity is limited to maintaining the laws of nature. But what exactly this further activity amounts to is hard to discern. Oord states that, whereas God does not have a body, there is a “material dimension” to God. But what this amounts to, and how it enables God to interact with worldly things, is not spelled out. I believe, however, that the best answer to this question may be found in the process philosophy in which Oord was trained and which forms the philosophical background of his own thought, even though he does not often employ the technical terminology of process philosophy. In that philosophy, each of the events which compose the world has as part of its inception an “initial aim,” provided by God, which establishes the best, or preferred, direction in which that event could resolve itself. God provides this initial aim, but God does not control the actual resolution for the event (the “subjective aim”), which is decided by the event itself as it occurs. And God’s failure to control this resolution is the key to the “uncontrolling” nature of God’s love and of God’s activity in the world. In this way, God can be positively active in the world without controlling the world in the way amipotence seeks to avoid; God controls neither people nor situations. I propose that this provides the best interpretation of what Oord has to say about the activity of God in the world.
In fact, however, this scheme allows rather little scope for God to make it the case that one thing rather than another happens in the world. The universality and perfection of God’s love must surely guarantee that, in each and every case, the initial aim provided by God is the very best initial aim which is possible in that situation. If not, then God’s love has not been fully and perfectly expressed in the situation. Whatever actually occurs, it comes about in consequence of the perfect initial aim provided by God, together with the “decision” made by the situation in the light of that initial aim. But this means that, whether the resolution of the situation is towards good or towards evil, it is not God’s input that determines which outcome occurs.
Oord, to be sure, does not want things to be interpreted deterministically; he emphasizes that the response of the creaturely situation to the divine “lure” is not predetermined. And what this means is that God’s own involvement is not determined either. This does not mean, however, that God has control over the result. It may be that, in a given situation, there are several different initial aims that are equally viable. God, then, selects one such initial aim and “proposes” it to the developing occasion. If, then, the overall situation develops in accordance with God’s wishes, God has been lucky; if not, God has had bad luck. The God of amipotence has to be reconciled to this possibility; indeed, if we look at the actual state of the world, bad luck for God must be all too common. In each and every situation, God does God’s best; but God doesn’t control the outcome.
Now consider the Psalms, the longest book in the Bible, and the one which, perhaps more than any other, shows what it has been like, over the centuries, for people to live with God. There is a great deal of variety in the Psalms, but one feature they have in common is that a considerable amount of control is ascribed to God—far more control, it would seem, than is allowed by the doctrine of amipotence. This control, control is assumed to operate both in the past and in the future. In the 23rd Psalm, the “green pastures” and the “still waters” with which God’s sheep has been blessed are due specifically to the care and provision of the Shepherd. The menace that lurks in the “valley of deep darkness” will be warded off by that same Shepherd, who is likewise the one who guarantees that the sheep will “dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” A more specific emphasis on protection from enemies is found in Psalm 57, which according to the heading was “Of David…when he fled from Saul, in the cave.” The author writes,
I lie down among lions
that greedily devour human prey;
their teeth are spears and arrows,
their tongues sharp swords.…
They set a net for my steps;
my soul was bowed down.
They dug a pit in my path,
but they have fallen into it themselves (Ps 57:4,6).
What is the adherent of amipotence to make of testimonies such as these? Perhaps we might suppose that the sheep’s good fortune is due to its favorable response to the divine “lure,” a response which was not present for other sheep who, as a result, live in less benign circumstances. But that would be to ascribe the blessings to the sheep itself, not (as in the Psalm) to the care given by the Shepherd. Did the LORD consistently provide to David the “initial aims” that enabled him to elude Saul’s pursuit, while Saul was lured by God in ways that led to his failure? If so, what does that say about God’s love for Saul?
There is a general problem here, one that stems from the very structure of the amipotence doctrine. Suppose that in one specific case God acts in such a way that a major evil is averted. (We need not concern ourselves at this point about the specific nature of the situation, or of the divine action involved.) In this case, the sort of grateful acknowledgement of God that is found in these Psalms is very much in order. But now comes the question: What about a different, but similar, situation in which a comparable evil is not prevented? What God has done in one case God could, it seems, have done in others, and so the questions about the problem of evil have returned in full force. Success in dealing with a particular threatening evil leads to failure in the overall aim of eliminating God’s responsibility for the evils that do occur. So there is a conflict: We desire to attribute God the ability to bring about a particular good result (or to prevent something evil). But if we do this, we ascribe to God precisely the power to control events that amipotence seeks to avoid—and in so doing, we reintroduce the problem of evil.
This antithesis between the attitude towards divine action and control found in the Psalms and that recommended by the doctrine of amipotence is deep and intractable. I believe that the opposition cannot be overcome; one may hold one of these attitudes or the other, but one cannot consistently hold both. I have not attempted to argue which of these attitudes is the correct one that we ought to affirm. It is possible that the Psalmists, and those who have followed them over many centuries, were naïve and unrealistic, and caused unnecessary problems by attributing to God power and control which God in fact does not have. Or perhaps they were right, and it is the denial of divine control that is mistaken. I don’t think we can avoid having to make this choice.
Bio: William Hasker is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Huntington University. He has served as editor of Faith and Philosophy, and has written numerous articles and several books, including God, Time, and Knowledge (Cornell, 1989), Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God (Routledge, 2004), and The Triumph of God Over Evil (InterVarsity, 2008).
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
William Hasker draws from the Psalms to criticize my views of divine power. He is worried that my scheme “allows rather little scope for God to make it the case that one thing rather than another thing happens in the world.“ He is correct, if this means that God cannot single-handedly make things happen. But there are major problems with thinking God can control in such ways, as I have argued in my work. Bill points to passages in the Psalms in which the author praises God for positive results. My theology affirms such accounts, but I say God did not bring about those results alone. God can be the source of all that’s good without being the only cause. I agree with Bill’s final words: we each must choose whether or not God can control. But no biblical passages explicitly require us to believe God can singlehandedly bring about a state of affairs. And far worse problems arise when believing God can control.
In addition to Oord’s chapter on scripture in The Death of Omnipotence, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. The following material is taken from Oord’s contribution to Chad Meister and James Dew, eds, God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007). The other four main contributors are Phillip Cary, William Lane Craig, Stephen Wykstra, and myself. Page reference in the text are to this volume.