Four Fatal Flaws of Amipotence
By Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Oord’s amipotent God is either powerless, coercive, manipulative, or self-contradictory…which is still better than omnipotent.
I have to admit, it was incredibly difficult writing this essay since autocorrect kept changing amipotence to omnipotence. Apparently even AI are classical theists! Despite agreeing with most of Thomas Jay Oord’s theology (especially his critiques of omnipotence which echoes thinkers like Charles Hartshorne,[1] David Ray Griffin,[2] and others within the tradition of process theology), I’ve decided to write in criticism of amipotence. I do so in hopes that by offering my best critiques, Oord’s already strong case for amipotence might be enhanced. What follows are four fatal flaws that challenge the heart of amipotence on the basis of freedom, power, and love.
1. The Best of All Possible Dumpster Fires?
If God’s love is “the most powerful force in the universe,”[3] why does the world still look like a dumpster fire half the time? Typical theodicy discourse consists of an incompatible triad: 1) an all-powerful God is capable of preventing suffering, 2) an all-loving God should want to prevent suffering, 3) the world is filled with suffering. Why? Oord’s solution is to replace omnipotence with amipotence, dismantling the triad by changing the view of God’s power.
The amipotent God can’t act singlehandedly to prevent suffering, so the pervasiveness of suffering no longer conflicts with God’s loving nature. Since God’s loving power is non-coercive, God can only invite, persuade, and encourage, but never compel. Basically, Oord puts the blame on creatures, explaining that God can’t control creatures or creation.[4] But does this adequately explain why the world is still such a mess, if the most powerful force in the universe is working in all places at all times to improve the world?
Even if we accept amipotence as a starting point, the non-coercive nature of divine power doesn’t really solve anything. Couldn’t God invite, persuade, encourage, or lure people to do just a little better? The extent of gratuitous evil in the world suggests that either God’s not trying hard enough (invalidating God’s love), or that God’s persuasive power is somehow inadequate, calling into question the claim that divine love is literally the most powerful force in the universe. At best, Oord’s amipotent God is simply impotent.
In either case, amipotence leads to a more troubling conclusion—this dumpster fire is the best of all possible worlds. God is already maxed out on persuasiveness. God can’t do any better, so neither can we. Oord might argue that there’s room for creatures to be more receptive to God’s persuasive lures, but is this realistic? God can’t be more persuasive than God already is, so any inclination we’d have to respond positively to the lure of God is already operating at 100%. If there was any chance we could be persuaded to do the slightest bit better, God would have successfully persuaded us to do so. Afterall, what force could succeed where God has failed? This means the world is always operating at its maximum potential for goodness; a deeply pessimistic view of reality, considering the atrocities and systemic injustices that persist.
2. God vs Gut
How, exactly, does God influence the world in a purely non-coercive way? When we talk about persuasion in human terms, it typically involves some form of communication—arguments, reasoning, emotional appeals, or providing information—to convince someone to act in a certain way. But if God’s persuasion is non-verbal, non-sensory, and non-coercive, what does it consist of? Oord argues that while we cannot perceive an invisible God with our five senses, we may infer God’s activities from what we observe in the world. Such inferences of divine action are “guesses about what’s going on behind or beneath what we sense.”[5] Put another way, God’s persuasion is so subtle that it works beneath the level of conscious awareness.
This is deeply problematic, however, since the universal and subtle nature of God’s activity makes it all but impossible to distinguish divine persuasion from natural psychological processes. Is this God, or my gut? Nobody knows! The problem is exacerbated by the prospect that God persuades by planting thoughts or stirring emotions to gently guide someone toward a particular action. It’s like the movie Inception, once you implant an idea in someone’s mind they will believe they generated the idea themselves and act on it. When our thoughts and desires are indistinguishable from God’s influence, free will becomes an illusion. And without genuine freedom, persuasion starts to look an awful lot like coercion.
3. The Gaslighting God
This brings me to my third, and related critique—the amipotent God is a master manipulator. There’s an inherent tension between God’s omniscience and God’s maximally powerful persuasiveness. If God knows every detail about a person’s psychology, desires, and circumstances, and if God is doing everything in God’s power to be persuasive at every moment, then God would be required to take advantage of that privileged knowledge in the name of love. If God failed to use this special knowledge to influence us to the greatest extent possible, then God wouldn’t be doing everything in God’s power to make the world a better place. A God that could do more to prevent suffering, but chooses not to, is guilty of the same moral failure Oord levels against the omnipotent God. But if an amipotent God does manipulate us in that way, we have a whole host of other problems, as it calls into question God’s nature as love, creaturely freedom, and the line between persuasion and coercion becomes dangerously blurred.
4. The Amipotence Paradox
Oord has argued (convincingly, I think) that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are logically incompatible. You can’t have both, and Oord chooses love. However, there is a similar incompatibility between divine freedom and amipotence. As Oord contends, “…divine love comes logically prior to sovereign choice. Consequently, God has to love creatures and creation; it’s God’s eternal nature to do so. When love comes first, God cannot choose not to love.”[6] And yet, Oord also argues that “love requires some degree of freedom.”[7] Herein lies the problem.
For love to be meaningful, it must be freely chosen. If God is necessarily loving (couldn’t be otherwise) and maximally loving (couldn’t be less so), then God must always act in the most loving way at every moment. Oord responds to similar critiques by arguing that, although God can’t choose whether to love, God freely chooses how best to love in any given situation. But is that really the case? Logically, there can only be one maximally loving option. We know this because whichever option God chooses is, by definition, the most loving one. If there was another more loving option, God would be obligated to choose that instead. God’s “choice” is predetermined by God’s nature. But if God can’t freely choose how to love, then God cannot truly love, since love requires freedom. Hence, the very necessity of a maximally loving God is a self-contradiction. The absoluteness of God’s love undermines the freedom required for love. In so far as God is necessarily maximally loving, God cannot be loving. That’s the Amipotence Paradox.
The idea that there are, at any given moment, more or less equally loving possibilities from which God can choose is just a lack of perspective on our part. Because God is omniscient, God is capable of perceiving the slightest discrepancies between infinite loving possibilities in order to identify the single most loving possibility. And once the most loving thing is identified, God would have no choice but to act accordingly. Freedom typically implies the ability to choose between different live options. But if there is only one possible action for God in any given situation (i.e. the most loving one) then where is the freedom? No choice, no freedom. No freedom, no love. Hence, the amipotent God is a contradiction in terms.
Ironically, to preserve the freedom necessary for genuine love, God would need to be unconstrained by necessity. In other words, if God could freely choose among different loving actions, even if some are less than maximally loving, then God’s love would be more authentic. But this goes against Oord’s insistence that God’s love is always the greatest it can be. God could be no more loving or any less loving than God already is. Such is the character of God’s perfect love. If it were otherwise, then we’re back to square one regarding theodicy, since a God that could be doing more to prevent suffering but chooses not to is culpable for evil.
Conclusion
Oord’s theory of amipotence is a compelling attempt to redefine God’s power in a way that prioritizes love and relationality. While the idea of a purely loving and non-coercive God is attractive, it introduces several logical inconsistencies and explanatory gaps. Oord’s amipotent God lacks the persuasive power to affect meaningful change in the world, leaving humanity without hope for a better future since this is the best of all possible dumpster fires. Or the amipotent God has too much persuasive power, such that we have no freedom and are merely the incepted puppets of a manipulating gaslighting God who uses omniscience to exert maximal persuasion over us, such that persuasion becomes indistinguishable from coercion. Or perhaps the amipotent God is simply a contradiction in terms—the paradoxical incompatibility of the necessity of God’s love and the freedom love requires. And yet, despite these potential flaws, amipotence is still far superior to omnipotence!
Bio: Wm. Andrew Schwartz, PhD is Associate Professor of Process Studies and Comparative Theology at Claremont School of Theology, and Executive Director of the Center for Process Studies. Former chair of the Open and Relational Theologies Unit of the American Academy of Religion, Schwartz has authored/edited seven books including, John B. Cobb, Jr: Selected Writings from a Christian Theologian (SacraSage 2023).
OORD’S RESPONSE
Andrew Swartz decided to write a criticism of the views that he largely shares with me. One of his criticisms is that God could be doing a little better. I address this by saying God always does the best God can ever do. Andrew knows this and wonders if we are in the best of all possible dumpster fires. This is very pessimistic view of the world. I see creation as having profound positive elements, while admitting there are also very negative ones. In his second criticism, Andrew worries we can’t distinguish between God‘s calls and our own guts. This is an important worry, and I know of no way to overcome it beyond appealing to our intuitions about goodness, beauty, and values. But we can never be certain. Andrew’s third worry is addressed by my response to his first. I think God can be doing 100% of what God is able to do and yet not manipulate or control. Andrew also worries, fourthly, that a God who must love is not free to do otherwise. I believe Andrew is wrong to say that “logically,“ there can only be one maximally loving option in any moment. To think this is to believe God has more than probable knowledge but certain knowledge.
For more on Oord’s view of God as neither externally nor voluntarily limited, see this article.
[1]. See Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (SUNY Press, 1984).
[2]. See David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (The Westminster Press, 1976).
[3]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (SacraSage Press 2023), 123.
[4]. Oord, 61.
[5]. Oord, 134.
[6]. Oord, 126.
[7]. Thomas Jay Oord, “Biology and the Freedom to Love” (Nov 1, 2016). https://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/biology_and_the_freedom_to_love