The Loving God Incapable of Love
By Ryan Patrick McLaughlin
Amipotence maintains that God must love the creation, but a God who must love the creation cannot love the creation.
I take several issues with Thomas Jay Oord’s theology—none of which, I should like to emphasize, have to do with whether it is sufficiently evangelical or should be considered “heretical.” I have little interest in such inquiries, personally. Oord is a friend of commendable moral character, and his scholarly contributions to conversations regarding God’s nature and the meaning of love can hardly be ignored. My criticisms focus on whether the solutions Oord offers to theological ideas he deems deficient are as superior as he suggests they are.
One case in which I think Oord falls decidedly short on this account is his effort to replace all variations of “omnipotence” with “amipotence.” My criticism is that amipotence ironically renders God incapable of loving the world by Oord’s own definition of the word. God’s “love” does not resemble anything akin to loving relationships, as humans know them. Coupling this criticism with the recognition that Oord’s evaluation of “voluntary kenosis” variations of omnipotence is spurious,[1] I do not think amipotence, as Oord presents it, is a necessary or altogether theologically helpful concept.
As Oord notes, amipotence is a contraction of “love” and “power” that prioritizes love over power. The hallmarks of this idea are worked out in Oord’s The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence, but the foundations of amipotence are evident in Oord’s earlier works. In essence, amipotence images God as one whose nature precedes their will in the sense that God cannot choose whether to love. “God must love.”[2] But “love” here carries a specific meaning. God cannot unilaterally bring about an outcome. God must work through noncoercive cooperation, a luring and persuading of the created order. And, in cases where God might intervene to bring about a specific end through some sufficiently efficacious force (such as when a parent forcefully removes a child from danger), God is unable to do so because God lacks a physical body and therefore cannot impact a physical world in such loving ways.
There are several issues with this view, but my focus here is one I take to be rather severe to amipotence: Oord’s understanding of amipotence robs God of all meaningful freedom. This is most surprising, since Oord holds freedom to be a prerequisite for love.[3] “We define the love in amipotence as acting intentionally, in relational response to both God and others, to promote overall well-being.”[4] In earlier writings, Oord clarifies this definition. By “intentionally,” he means that love entails (and requires) deliberation, motive, and freedom. He goes so far as to write, “Love is meaningless if we are not free to some degree.”[5] Or again, “Love is meaningless if individuals are not free to choose one action rather than others.”[6]
But an amipotent God must love all creatures. This means that God must perpetually promote creaturely well-being. It follows that God must always seek to promote what God perceives to be the best outcomes for creatures to the extent that God is able. This claim is an issue for Oord. God must act this way because it is God’s nature to do so. God did not choose this nature, and so God has never had a choice when it comes to love. If freedom is a requisite for love, in what meaningful way can an amipotent God, who acts out of necessity of nature, love the creation?
Oord attempts to remedy this issue by introducing freedom into God’s love, writing, “Saying God has to love does not mean God is altogether without freedom. God loves moment to moment, facing an open, yet-to-be-determined future. Consequently, God freely chooses how to love in each moment, given the possibilities and circumstances. Because God cannot be certain how free creatures will respond, God freely selects among the best options and calls creatures to choose.”[7]
There is a lot—nothing short of God’s relational freedom, which many of us, presumably including Oord, identify as a requisite for authentic love—riding on whether this quote holds water. So, does it? I think not.
In a recent correspondence with Oord, I highlighted that I did not see how his depiction of God was practically different than an omnibenevolent computer that was programmed to seek the well-being of others to whatever extent it was able. In both cases, there is no freedom required. God must act according to God’s nature, which God did not choose. The computer must act according to its coding, which it did not choose. I also noted that introducing choice into God’s love by saying God freely chooses how to love does not help matters, because God is obligated always to take the most loving path. So, even the specifics of the “how” are forced upon God’s will by God’s nature (as would be the case for an omnibenevolent computer).
Oord responded in a blog post, writing,
“Ryan worries that God choosing how to love isn’t real freedom. After all, says Ryan, God would always choose the most loving option. I’ve argued in various places, however, that open and relational theology describes a view of reality in which God can’t know with certainty which of the billions of options is most loving. After all, God can’t know the future; God can’t know the future free choices; God can’t know future random events. It’s true that a necessarily loving God would not choose options likely to undermine well-being. And God can crunch probabilities like no other. But there’s a wide range of loving options that could promote well-being, depending on future free choices, randomness, etc. So God freely chooses among those loving options.”[8]
This response does not clearly address the issue I am raising. Oord is essentially arguing that, because God cannot know which possible option in the unknown future is the most loving, God can freely choose between numerous loving options. But this argument misses the point altogether. It does not matter if God knows which option is the most loving. Nor does it matter is God is aware of all the possibilities. All that matters, in terms of God’s freedom, is that God must take the option God perceives to be the most loving out of the options of which God is aware. The same could be said of an omnibenevolent computer. Both God and the computer might be wrong, of course. But that is beside the point when it comes to whether either is free to do otherwise.
This point might be more easily made by way of a simplistic analogy, with the caveat that all analogies are imperfect.
Imagine God were shopping for a birthday gift for a child (assuming, for the sake of our analogy, that God were able to do so). Per Oord’s definition of love, God would, by necessity of nature, desire to get a gift that most promoted the child’s holistic well-being. This is not a matter of choice. God must do it. Freewill has not yet entered the equation. God is acting out of necessity according to God’s nature.
Let us assume God perceives, based on God’s knowledge, that a stuffed animal will best promote the child’s happiness and well-being—perhaps the child has a particular fondness for them. At this point, God would, we may assume, have ruled out buying grenades and bags of broken glass (all decidedly unloving gifts). But God would also have ruled out gifts such as video games, board games, picture books, and the like, not because those gifts are unloving, but because according to God’s perception, those gifts will not maximize well-being for this child. Only a stuffed animal will. And God must act accordingly. Again, God’s freedom has yet to enter the equation.
Going further, we might ask: Which stuffed animal to buy? Let us suppose that God perceives, based on everything God knows—notwithstanding an unpredictable open future—that the child would most appreciate a Piglet stuffed animal from the beloved Milne series, Winnie the Pooh. Is God free to buy a different stuffed animal, perceiving that it would lead to suboptimal well-being? It would seem not. God must buy a Piglet stuffed animal because God must act according to God’s loving nature, which seeks by necessity to optimize well-being. Freewill eludes yet again.
However, there are several variations of Piglet plushies. God believes, again based on what God knows, that one of these variations will be most pleasing to the child. Perhaps the difference is minimal, but it matters in terms of optimizing well-being. God has arrived at a necessary action. God must buy that Piglet plushie if God believes doing so will maximize well-being for the child. God cannot do otherwise.
God has now gone through the whole process of acting out of “love” without a single movement of freedom in which God could have acted otherwise than God acted. It is also worthy of note that the omnibenevolent computer, if it had the same data God did, would have invariably arrived at the same fluffy conclusion.
To reiterate, the question is not whether God’s perception is right or wrong. Nor is it, as Oord suggests elsewhere,[9] whether God wants to buy the Piglet plushie or not (desire is a necessary manifestation of God’s nature in this case). The question is whether God is free to act otherwise, given God’s nature and God’s perception regarding the most loving option available. According to Oord’s claims about amipotence, the answer seems to be that God must, as I suggested earlier, seek to promote what God perceives to be the best outcome to the extent that God is able. In other words, God has no freedom in this matter. Furthermore, God needs no freedom—no more than an omnibenevolent computer would need.
If such is the case, though, Oord’s paragraph regarding God’s freedom, upon which so much hinged—appears wrong. God neither has nor requires meaningful freedom when it comes to whether to love or how to love. But if such is the case, what are we to make of Oord’s claim that freedom is a requisite for love? In what way can we say that God genuinely loves us any more than an omnibenevolent computer could be said to love us?
Perhaps the most incriminatory way I can express this critique is: If God were somehow able to give humans a nature like God’s nature, such that we must love others and God, would God do so? Or would doing so itself be a violation of love because we would have no choice in matters of love? If the latter, then is not God’s lack of choice in relation to God’s own loving nature and the subsequent lack of choice regarding whether and how to love problematic?
The amipotent God only loves in the most philosophically compatibilist sense of freedom—driven forcefully by a nature God did not choose and cannot resist. Inasmuch as such a view of love violates Oord’s own definition of love, we may arrive at our conclusion: A God who must love the creation cannot love the creation.
Bio: Ryan Patrick McLaughlin is an assistant professor and chair of Religious Studies at Saint Elizabeth University. He is the author of Preservation and Protest (2014, Fortress Press) and Christianity and the Status of Animals (2014, Palgrave Macmillan) and numerous articles and book chapters on animal and environmental ethics, the problem of evil, and interreligious dialogue.
OORD’S RESPONSE
I really appreciate Ryan McLaughlin taking my proposals seriously. In this essay, he argues that my own definition of love renders God incapable of love. He rightly sees that I think God must love, because it’s God’s nature to do so. And he rightly describes my view that God freely chooses how to love in each moment. Ryan cites a previous blog essay in which I talk about the importance of an open future when it comes to God freely choosing among loving options.
Unfortunately, Ryan appeals to a computer analogy when talking about God. I say this is unfortunate, because I suspect that both he and I reject the notion that computers are genuine decision makers. This difference is important, because computers have external programmers not internal, free decision making. This computer analogy is relevant, because he thinks the God I affirm can’t freely love just like computers can’t freely love. But I think the God whose nature is love is not programmed by anything external. This makes the computer analogy unhelpful, because computers have external programmers.
Ryan’s provocative example of God buying a birthday gift is interesting. But it does not factor in the myriad of ways in which a free gift of divine love might affect the future positively or negatively. If God could be certain that one divine gift or another would bring about the greatest possible good, then Ryan’s worry about divine freedom would be legitimate. But God cannot be certain, not in the short run and especially not in the long run. This lack of certainty — given multiple live options — is essential to freedom as I have defined it. So God can be free despite being wise about choosing among options, each of which God cannot know will be most helpful in the long run.
For more on Oord’s view of divine freedom, see this article.
[1]. On this point, see John Sanders’s helpful assessment, “A Response to Oord’s Death of Omnipotence,” available at https://drjohnsanders.com/response-to-oords-death-of-omnipotence/.
[2]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 161.
[3]. See Thomas Jay Oord, “An Open Theology Doctrine of Creation and Solution to the Problem of Evil,” in Creation Made Free: Open Theology Engaging Science, ed. Thomas Jay Oord (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009), 28-52.
[4]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence, (SacraSage Press, 2023), 122. Emphasis added.
[5]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2010), 27.
[6]. Thomas Jay Oord, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 17.
[7]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence, 126.
[8]. Thomas Jay Oord, “Responding to Ryan Patrick McLaughlin (Part 1/3).” Emphasis original. https://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/6584.
[9]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence, 67-68.