Good Lord Willing

By Melissa Owens Stewart

Amipotence is more than a semantic change for omnipotence. It is healing corrective.

The tattered remnants of Hurricane Debby worked their way through the mid-Atlantic today as a post-tropical cyclone. The heavy rain began last night, interrupting sleep and dreams, as each storm band announced its arrival with thunderous alarms. Today brought continued bouts of downpours and wind gusts as Debby exhausted herself working against the land. The entire East Coast of the United States will have felt her power before she is extinguished.

As with every storm of such magnitude, the impacts are far-reaching. For some, we changed social plans and felt the accompanying disappointment of losing time with family and friends enjoying a few summer days together. We count ourselves lucky when we compare our disappointment with the loss so many have experienced. Some lost income as the storm made it impossible to travel to their work site or perform their job. Others endured the loss of property, as homes and businesses were overwhelmed with flood water. And, as of this writing, eight people have lost their lives to Debby’s power.

There is never a storm that passes without me recalling a common refrain from my southern childhood—”good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” It is a casual commitment to attend an event or perform a task. “We’ll see you for Sunday morning church service if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.” “We’ll mow the grass tomorrow if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.” It is generally repeated without a great deal of thought for its literal meaning. But it is more than a casual cliché, for at its core is a theological premise regarding God’s power. God can step in at any time to change our circumstances or plans. Anything that does or does not happen reflects God’s will. Whether storm, blessing, sickness, or health, the Lord is the cause, and the Lord’s will is the reason. The omnipotent God is at work—an idea consistently reinforced in jargon, song, and sermon.

But is that what we want to say, or think, in the face of storms like Debby or any disaster or blessing? I get a moody, rainy day to work on this essay, but eight families lost loved ones? Are we forced to think this way, trying to determine what God was trying to accomplish by unleashing Debby? Maybe we brought it on ourselves as we needed a good old-fashioned lashing in the form of whipping winds to punish us? Who can say? God’s ways are mysterious.

And yes, it is mysterious to try and conceive of an omnipotent God who is therefore responsible for all the good, bad, and ugly that has ever been and ever will be, and to then assert that God is love. Volumes have been written to try and reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable paradox, but classical theology leaves us with no better alternative than to assume that there’s just something we don’t understand about why God’s love necessitates so much sorrow and despair on the part of creation.

So, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. Can we even question omnipotence as Oord does without committing blasphemy? Can an attempt to do so be anything other than an attempt to undermine God’s authority? And my God, what is there to gain by doing so? But many of us have already done so, at least in some ways. We readily acknowledge that God cannot sin, that God cannot change the past, an incorporeal God cannot throw a rock. For those that embrace a strong form of free will theology, you hold that God cannot prevent us from freely choosing to obey or disobey God’s will. But to go as far as to say that God is not omnipotent seems like sacrilege because we are so steeped in its lore. Why not just endlessly qualify what we mean by omnipotence and keep the language so we can preserve our dignity and piety and not provoke the wrath of God in the process?

Thomas Jay Oord offers a meaningful alternative in The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence. If readers who are troubled by so bold a proclamation can suspend their apprehension and attend to his arguments, they may find for themselves a view of God that reflects the self-giving love found in Jesus and makes God the chief exemplar of the love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. What’s more, we can reconcile the cognitive dissonance we experience when we confront the problem of evil engendered by an omnipotent view of God.

Charles Harthorne attends to this problem in his masterful Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes. Hartshorne’s argues than God is “a highest conceivable or supreme power, but is not and could not achieve the absurdity of monopolizing decision making [omnipotent]…only in this form is the highest power either consistently conceivable or worthy of worship.” The worship this approach inspires need not lean on a hyperbolic term for God’s power. It instead arises from the awe we can experience when considering the utter ascendency of God, who is in all ways superior to all of creation, yet without the means or intent to have absolute control.

Along with Hartshorne, philosophers and theologians like Alfred North Whitehead have long pointed to the theological, scientific, and philosophical problems associated with omnipotence when it is defined as God having all power. Those that embrace Process Theology, as well as Open and Relational thinkers, recognize relationality as a fundamental feature or our existence, which makes the concept of God having all power untenable. God is not the only participant in any event because every party to the event has some form of agency. “It is the existence of many decision makers that produce everything, whether good or ill.” Our circumstances are ever evolving in accordance with the ongoing inter-relational dynamics unfolding across creation.

Catherine Keller offers, “The alternative to omnipotence lies in the risky interactivity of relationship.” One calls to mind the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” There were two distinct wills on display in this relational narrative, both that of the Father and that of Jesus. Jesus had to choose to surrender his will and obey that of the Father, but this was no foregone conclusion. At the very heart of Christianity lies a decision. Jesus chose to love and obey the Father by remaining faithful. For this, he suffered at the hands of those who rejected that same love. This is the risky interactivity of relationship that Keller alludes to—enmeshed vulnerability for better or worse.

Without the reassuring, familiar bastion of omnipotence, what else serves as our intellectual and emotional anchor? Without some other adequate way to describe God’s power, we seem beholden to continue its use and hope everyone knows what we mean if we are among those who believe it is inaccurate. The alternative of amipotence proposed by Oord offers us a much clearer depiction of God—God’s love, God’s power, God’s own enmeshment with creation. Amipotence says that love is first and foremost among God’s attributes. It is the cipher to translate our understanding of each of God’s other attributes. God’s love is pervasive because God is omnipresent. It never ceases because God is eternal. It never forces because God’s power is encircled by a perfect love that would not force its way. This is not the kind of power we tend to associate with supreme power. But it is the kind of power befitting the new kind of kingdom Jesus proclaimed. Our typical vision of power looks meager, hostile, and fleeting when compared to the transformative power of God’s eternal love. As Oord offers, “Divine love is literally the most powerful force in the world.” (123)

And it’s more than a semantic change. It’s a change that accounts for the presence of evil, better aligns with the holistic witness of scripture, and reduces religious and scientific conflict—all while engendering a clearer vision of God’s love and power. Further, it encourages us to participate in the manifestation of God’s love in the world. Can we find any scandal in a term that brings so much clarity to our view of God, while ridding God of the specter of evil that turns so many away? Are we not using God’s name in vain when we casually ascribe the consequences of nature or our own human behavior to God? Are we not better off affirming God’s steadfast love and acknowledging that rain falls on the heads of the just and unjust as Jesus taught?

When the storms pass, injustices occur, and loved ones are lost, we don’t have to revert to shallow or misleading platitudes about a controlling God. Instead, we can encourage one another with the wonder of God’s unfailing amipotence. We can aid our neighbor act as the good Lord wills—with love, “acting intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.” (122)

Bio: Melissa Owens Stewart, a Doctor of Theology and Ministry (DThM) candidate with Northwind Theological Seminary, holds a MSc from the University of Edinburgh in Philosophy, Science, and Religion. She lives in Maryland and focuses her research on applying Open and Relational Theology to public policy.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Melissa Owens Stewart argues that the Amipotence perspective offers a healing corrective to traditional views of God’s power. She critiques the old phrase “Good Lord willing” as the primary explanation for why things happen, rejecting the classical view of power that underlies it. Drawing on various thinkers who support her insights, Melissa contends that divine love provides the reassurance and emotional grounding believers need. By shifting our language and imagination from a focus on dominating power to the vision of uncontrolling love, she shows how theology can move from fear toward trust, from coercion toward compassionate cooperation.

For more on Oord’s view of open theism and divine limitations, see this article.

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