Power, Control, and our Failure to Love the Earth
By Aimee Allison Hein
Amipotence offers a compelling reframing of power that can help reshape our relationship with the Earth.
In the latest of what often seems to be a never-ending litany of dire warnings for our future on this planet, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave an impassioned plea for action from Nukuʻalofa, Tonga in late August of 2024. “The ocean is overflowing,” Guterres warned. “This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity’s making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety.” Pacific Island nations like Tonga are facing some of the most disproportionate and immediate impacts of our continued mistreatment of the Earth.[1] Right now, they face what we might all face in the future. Once again, we are being called to confront the devastation we have wrought and to change course before it is too late for us to do so.
There are a variety of factors that have led to this crisis. Arguably, many of these ultimately boil down to a question of power: how do we think about power, and how has that shaped the way we relate to the planet? Much has been written about the problem of anthropocentrism and the prioritization of human needs and desires over the good of creation as a whole. This is a serious problem. The issue is not, however, only this prioritization of humans but also the understanding of power that has too often accompanied that prioritization. Anthropocentrism alone is morally questionable but does not necessarily cause widespread ecological harm. At the heart of the climate crisis, we can see a prevailing desire to control and bend the world around us to our will in service of human needs. What climate change teaches us is that this has been a mistake. Not only has this way of proceeding caused immense harm to the rest of creation, but our treatment of the Earth is also putting humans in peril. In the face of this reality, Thomas Jay Oord’s proposal of the amipotent God offers us a model for rethinking power, control, and anthropocentrism that can illuminate our path as we seek a sustainable way forward.
Power and control have long been linked. Power, after all, is defined as the ability to direct or influence. What is that, if not the ability to control? The amipotent God, however, challenges this assumption. “Amipotence,” Oord writes, “affirms the existence of a powerful God whose universal influence is uncontrolling love.”[2] A God whose power is rooted in and governed by love rather than control has much to teach us about our understanding of power. Amipotence invites us toward a relationship with the Earth guided by love, not a will to control. Amipotence understands love to be logically prior to sovereign choice.[3] In other words, love for the earth and love for each other, especially those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, ought to be our guiding focus.
As a response to anthropocentrism, this prioritization of love calls us away from a hierarchical understanding of reality. In some ways, this call away from hierarchy is already being made. Laudato si, for example, speaks of humanity as integrally intertwined in and part of nature. “Nature,” Pope Francis writes, “cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it” (LS, 139). The worldview emphasized in Laudato si is an important move away from anthropocentrism. “Instead of asking where humans and nonhuman creatures stand within a hierarchy, the encyclical proposes a web of life in which all creatures are mutually dependent.”[4] This move can be further enhanced and theologically undergirded by amipotence. If love is God’s logical and necessary priority at all times, it should also be ours. As an integral part of nature, that love has to apply to all of creation, not just to humans, and especially not, as has too often been the case, just to the most privileged among us. Love calls us to a relationship defined by mutuality and equity, not hierarchy. Amipotence helps us resist anthropocentrism.
An amipotent, rather than omnipotent, understanding of God directs us toward a greater prioritization of love for each other and creation, which is important as we seek a new way of relating to creation. What is even more helpful about amipotence, however, is the way it so substantially subverts our understanding of what power looks like. This subversion points us more fully in a new and promising direction. While, as Oord highlights, an omnipotent God must have all power, the amipotent God does not hoard power but shares it because God is love and “it’s the nature of love to do so.”[5] We can think about our relationship with the earth similarly. Humans have an immense power to shape the world, especially given the technological advances of the last few centuries. Too often, that power has been wielded against the Earth. This use of our power must change.
A God who shares power, necessarily and lovingly, invites us to do the same. Climate change reminds us that the Earth also has power, and when natural systems are thrown out of kilter, the Earth’s power can and will negatively impact human life. Power is indeed social. “The exercise of power occurs in relation to others.”[6] We have a remarkable ability to shape the world around us, but the world around us also has power, and that power responds to our actions in positive or negative ways. Given the social nature of power, we ought to consider how we can more willingly share power with creation. How can we work with our environments, respecting the way they function naturally and, in doing so, attend to human needs and the needs of the rest of creation?
Sometimes, even our efforts to address the climate crisis have evidenced a problematic view of power. Pope Francis also addresses this, criticizing the technocratic paradigm that has not only contributed significantly to the ecological crisis but has too often also shaped our attempts to course correct. This paradigm, as described by Francis, causes us to believe that all problems, including the problem of climate change, can be addressed through the power of science and technology. This worldview convinces us that it is possible for humans to gain enough power and intelligence that we can successfully apply that power to any problem (LS, 101-136). To be sure, science and technology have an essential role to play in addressing climate change, but we must realize that we cannot and will not reach a level of power and control that will allow us to bend the Earth so perfectly to our will as to get us out of this mess. The goal should not be to control the Earth and force climate change into submission. That is the very approach that led us here in the first place. In this sense, we need less to course correct and more to find a new course entirely. To do so, we must relinquish our desire to be all-powerful and learn instead to cooperate with the rest of creation.
It is important to emphasize that the amipotent God who shares power does not abandon any interest in the direction humanity takes. God, as revealed in scripture and Christian tradition, has a vision for creation and desires our cooperation and participation. Instead of forcing that vision in a deterministic, controlling fashion, however, God invites. “God influences, persuades, lures, or ‘calls’ us to embrace the principles of God’s vision in every context.”[7] Power, defined as the ability to direct or influence, fits just as well (if not better) with the idea of a persuasive invitation or call as it does with the notion of control. God is powerful not because God is in control of everything and determines all outcomes but because God offers a compelling invitation.
Similarly, sharing power with the Earth does not mean we abandon a say in the world and how it functions. Human needs are important, and our collaboration with creation should always seek to fulfill those needs. But fulfilling our needs does not require hoarding power and seeking to control the Earth. In fact, we are seeing exactly the opposite. Our desire to control has put the whole of creation, humans included, at risk. We must learn to share power with the Earth, as God shares power with us. While God can be said to be the most powerful, amipotence resists the impulse to say God is all-powerful, because “the flourishing God desires creaturely contributions and conducive conditions in creation. A loving God needs us because love is relational.”[8] A God who is immensely powerful, more powerful than we can conceive, but still in some way needs creation, can be a strong reminder of our interdependence. We necessarily rely not only on each other but on the rest of creation. Climate change makes that abundantly clear. Human flourishing is dependent on the flourishing of our natural environments. When our environments are not flourishing, humans also suffer. We must learn to share power, to collaborate and cooperate with creation, because our flourishing depends on it.
This is, perhaps, a tall order. Many of us are very comfortable in the lifestyles and standards of living to which we are accustomed. Those who have the most power and who cause the most harm to the Earth seem to have, or to understand themselves to have, little incentive to change. Still, as we seek to make the changes that are necessary for both our continued existence and our moral health, amipotence seems a promising theology to help us on the way. “Love’s ultimate victory will not come through absolute control but through relentless love.”[9] We must choose to truly love not only ourselves, but each other and the Earth, even when it is hard, even when it requires sacrifices, and even when the path seems impossibly steep. This is the only way forward.
Bio: Aimee Allison Hein is an assistant professor of theological ethics at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She completed her PhD in Theological Ethics at Boston College. Hein is the author of Theology in Motion: Migration, History, and Responsibility (Fortress Press, 2024). She is an avid sports fan and also loves musical theater.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Aimee Allison Hein explores how the idea of amipotence relates to climate change. She argues that a God who always loves but never controls aligns more closely with authentic care for the Earth and for one another, especially those most vulnerable to environmental harm. I agree! Amipotence challenges anthropocentrism by encouraging mutuality and equity in our relationships. A God who shares power with all creation invites us to do likewise. Our collective flourishing depends on learning to cooperate with both nature and the divine. I agree with Aimee that our hope rests on responding faithfully to God’s uncontrolling, amipotent love.
For more on Oord’s view of God’s power and climate change, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Hellen Regan, “The ocean is overflowing’: UN chief issues global SOS as new reports warn Pacific sea-level rise outstrips global average,” CNN, August 27, 2024, https://tinyurl.com/khffhbxe.
[2]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence (Grasmere, Id.: SacraSage, 2023), 163.
[3]. Ibid, 128.
[4]. Jacob M. Kohlhaas and Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, “Loving the World We Are: Anthropology and Relationality in Laudato Si,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47, no. 3 (2019): 519.
[5]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence,148.
[6]. Ibid., 57.
[7]. Monica Coleman, Making a Way out of No Way: A Womanist Theology (Innovations: African American Religious Thought) (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2008), 59.
[8]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence, 9.
[9]. Ibid, 148.