Seventy Times Seventy Times Infinity
By Jeanyne B. Slettom
A theology of amipotence, as an alternative to atonement theories, provides a superior answer to the question of how salvation works.
The Christian meta-narrative of salvation describes a problematized relationship between God and humanity brought on by human sin, one consequence of which is an impaired will that makes a human remedy impossible. The solution is classically stated as something salvific in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which results in reconciliation between God and humanity and brings forgiveness, redemption, and eternal life. All of these elements are constitutive of Christian faith, and each has had its times of greater or lesser emphasis within the tradition.
Given this framework, there are three basic questions that a Christian soteriology must address: from what are we saved, to what are we saved , and how are we saved? The answers to these questions form a meta-narrative of salvation that reached early consensus on the first two questions—from sin and death to eternal life—but has diverged on the question of how. How exactly does Jesus effect our salvation? How do we appropriate it? The answers to these, and a great many other related questions, comprise the doctrine of atonement.
Atonement, as stated, is the Christian doctrine of reconciliation between God and humankind. The actual content of the doctrine, however, is not so simple, especially in the West. Theological controversies necessitated precise doctrinal definitions of Christology and the Trinity, but not so with the atonement. Thus the doctrine exists within a tradition of reformulation, responding to different social, political, and legal developments in Western culture. The result is a pluralistic tradition, with atonement variously understood as a ransom paid to the devil (early church), the satisfaction of God’s affronted honor (Anselm), the moral influence theory (Abelard), and the substitution of Jesus for sinful humanity (the Reformers).
Each proposal provoked its own criticisms, thus producing two trajectories in the doctrinal tradition: one generally positive, with internal points of disagreement, the other generally critical. It is the latter that eventually triumphed in the academic theology of the liberal Protestant church; the former is still prevalent among many of the faithful, especially in evangelical Protestantism and conservative Catholicism. Among critics, feminist theologians have accused the atonement of being a patriarchal concept rooted in violence and implicated in the abuse of women and children; liberation theologians object to the emphasis on personal salvation and the afterlife, leaving this-worldly social and economic justice realities unaddressed. Some theologians have called for abandoning it altogether. But if the doctrine explains the efficacy of salvation—the how—then the doctrine must be replaced by a sound theological alternative, or, like a bad penny, it will keep coming back.
Functionally, atonement serves as the mechanism of salvation, but it can also be described as an attempt to explain why God cannot simply forgive penitent sinners but first requires some propitiating act. Thus, in the ransom theory, God resorts to trickery, setting a trap for the devil that includes the suffering and death of the innocent Jesus. In the satisfaction theory, we have the spectacle of a God bound by the codes of medieval honor who requires satisfaction as a condition for forgiveness and accepts as that satisfaction the death of the innocent Jesus. In the substitution theory we have a wrathful judge who—again—accepts the death of the innocent Jesus and, in return, acquits sinful humankind.
In all of these theories, the anthropomorphism of the divine nature approaches caricature, but they all conceal a serious problem. A God who cannot forgive is not all-powerful. A God who will not forgive is not all-good. A God who withholds the power to forgive is not all-loving. In other words, atonement theories are a variation on the theodicy problem.[1] By implication, God is unable to do what Jesus requires of us in Matthew 18:22. When asked how many times he should forgive, Peter asks, “Seven?” And Jesus answers him, “Not seven times, but…seventy times seven.”
Process-relational theologians, generally speaking, provide a way out this impasse by reformulating the doctrine of God. They reject omniscience and omnipotence and elevate omnipresence. That is, God’s incarnation is ongoing and extends throughout all creation, meaning that God experiences with us all that we experience and, as the “most moved mover,” shares in our suffering. But is this enough? Or does the proposal need to go one step further and address the feminist-liberationist call for justice?
Here is where Thomas J. Oord’s concept of amipotence is particularly helpful. Oord coined the word, he writes to “stress the priority of love over power in God” asserting that love is “logically and conceptually prior to divine power.”[2] In a unique but thoroughly process-relational move, Oord does not exclude the category occupied by “omnipotence.” Instead, he transforms it, creating the new term with its meter and meaning coming out of its predecessor. He has, in Jungian terms, preserved the category but found a larger container for it.
For Oord, an amipotent God operates in the world in much the same way described by process-relational theologians. That is, “This loving God acts moment by moment, exerting causal influence throughout creation. God creates, sustains, saves, and transforms. Nothing and no one is more influential; the uncontrolling love of an amipotent God is universally active and everlasting.”[3] But by emphasizing love, which requires others, Oord can emphasize the cooperative nature of God’s redemptive work in the world. In a challenge to all his readers, Oord claims, “The flourishing God desires requires creaturely contributions and conducive conditions in creation. A loving God needs us, because love is relational.”[4]
In a theology of amipotence, God does not need to be paid a ransom, to have God’s honor satisfied, or to sit on the judicial bench in some cosmic courtroom. The question of God’s forgiveness becomes moot. Can God forgive? Of course. An amipotent God forgives seventy times seventy times infinity. “The logic of hell crumbles if we believe God is loving but not omnipotent. A loving God would not send anyone to eternal conscious torment, and a God who cannot control could not send anyone. Whatever conditions we encounter after death are not decided by God singlehandedly. Our future in this life and the next rests, in part, upon what we decide in response to a loving God and other creaturely decisions.”[5]
But mention of hell, of course, reminds us that real evil exists in the world, just as the crucifixion reminds us of what Oord calls “forces, factors, and actors”[6] that resist God’s love and refuse to cooperate with it. As Oord affirms, a loving God is not responsible for evil. Possibilities for evil arise, he writes, “naturally from the self-causation each creature expresses.”[7] But if God cannot act unilaterally to prevent, God can—and does—work through embodied creatures for justice, healing, and peace that is personal, planetary, and communal.
A theology of amipotence, if it is to offer a viable alternative to classic atonement theories, must, of course, find its center somehow in the person and work of Jesus. In Pluriform Love, Oord claims that “the life, words, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus” “reveal most clearly who God is and what God wants.”[8] Jesus himself summed up what that is when he named his two love commandments—to love God and to love one’s neighbor.
Classical theology framed salvation around a trio of questions: from what, to what, and how. A theology of amipotence extends the idea of salvation to all of creation and adds a fourth question, making it, too, constitutive of salvation. In the past we were saved from sin and death to reconciliation with God and eternal life, and how? through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus. A theology of amipotence offers a revision and adds a fourth question. We are saved from meaninglessness and alienation to life abundant, in cooperation with the ever-present, all-loving transformative being of God. And finally, what is our salvation for? to participate with God in the ongoing transformation of the world, “to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”
Bio: Jeanyne B. Slettom is an academic publisher and public scholar whose primary interests are process-relational and transdisciplinary thought. She is the publisher of Process Century Press, a former director of Process & Faith, and an ordained UCC minister. She has taught at Claremont School of Theology and United Theological Seminary (MN). Her PhD is in Philosophy of Religion and Theology (Claremont Graduate University). She lives and works on the banks of the Mississippi River.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Jeanyne Slettom thoughtfully incorporates amipotence into her search for an alternative atonement theory, challenging the dominant models in Christianity. I deeply appreciate how clearly she outlines the problems with traditional atonement views, and I fully agree with her critiques. Her use of Matthew 18, which emphasizes infinite forgiveness, serves as a powerful foundation for reimagining atonement. The model she proposes aligns well with amipotence’s central claims. I also affirm Jeanyne’s view that an amipotent atonement extends salvation to all creation and calls for cooperative transformation. True atonement, she insists, leads us to join the Spirit in liberating others.
For more on Oord’s view on forgiveness, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. If God is all good and all-powerful, how is God not implicated in the existence of evil?
[2]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (SacraSage, 2023), 125.
[3]. Oord, Death of Omnipotence, 10.
[4]. Oord, Death of Omnipotence, 10.
[5]. Oord, Death of Omnipotence, 112.
[6]. Oord, Death of Omnipotence, 102.
[7]. Oord, Death of Omnipotence, 110.
[8]. Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love (SacraSage, 2022), 151.