The Metaphysics of Love

By Olav Bryant Smith

It is metaphysically impossible for a loving God to be strictly omnipotent, having all power.

The biblical God is not omnipotent. The entire biblical record is one of God offering guidance, encouraging, cajoling, planning, and making it clear that our best interests as human beings lie in cooperating with that plan. But time and again, human beings fail to cooperate with divine love and the divine plan that comes from that love. And God is disappointed with human failure, or sin. Sin brings suffering in its wake. And the biblical God goes to work in an effort to bring human beings back to the way and co-create good where evil has occurred.

That is not the story of an omnipotent God. The story of a perfect and omnipotent God would not even be interesting. We would live in what Leibniz called the best of all possible worlds, and every detail would be planned from the beginning of time. There would be no decisions to make on the part of human beings. We would be automatons carrying out internal programming. There would be no interpersonal relationships, because there would be no genuine persons to have a relationship with. In fact, it would be difficult to even call such a god a person, because such a god would be the ultimate deus ex machina, not only controlling the machine, but something of a machine itself: an impersonal mechanism with no other persons to relate to and cranking out predetermined results.

Taking omnipotence by the literal meaning of “all power,” suggesting that the omnipotent God has all the power, means that there are no other beings with power. And that really means that there really would be no other beings, period. The best way to describe such a world is pantheism, a kind of monism where nothing has concrete reality as a being except The One. This is not the biblical God. It is a mistaken Greek construct.

But the use of the word omnipotence has been very ambiguous. Many people understand that the biblical God is not literally omnipotent in the sense of having all the power. So, many people assume that while God has all the power technically, God gave us free will. This makes room for sinful straying. Some hold onto the idea that all power is available to God, even if God allows this freedom. This becomes a psychological coping mechanism at times. No matter what happens, no matter how much suffering occurs, many will say it was according to God’s plan. That can be comforting, as long as you don’t look too closely at this idea’s implications: that God either caused the suffering directly or sat by and did nothing about it even if God could have.

In this way, the problem of evil arises. From diseases to earthquakes to tornadoes to hurricanes and tsunamis, the world is filled with natural evils that cause immense suffering. Human beings obviously abuse their freedom and also cause enormous suffering. We can try to comfort ourselves by saying that God wouldn’t have allowed it to happen if it weren’t for the best somehow. Sometimes that seems to be the case. But in the face of genuine, unnecessary suffering, that coping mechanism sounds false and very hollow. There is no way that a capable loving person could stand by, for example, and watch while someone is harmed by another person and not do anything about it. And if we, as even limited beings could not stand idly by while someone is harmed, how can we excuse an infinitely capable and loving God for doing so? The fact is that God cannot be perfectly loving and omnipotent. Something has to give.

Either God is not benevolent, or God does not have all the power. And the biblical narrative is clear: God does not have all the power. Literally true or not, the narrative of Noah’s Ark shows great divine anger and frustration over how things had gotten so bad that there was nothing to do but to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. The great villains of the Bible exercise their power against God’s will. And the great heroes of the Bible cooperate with God’s will, thereby becoming vehicles of God’s promise in the world.

In those rare cases where the narrative strays into implications of omnipotence by saying that God hardened the hearts of those villains, we are left scratching our heads. “Are you literally saying that God is responsible for the evil that God is condemning?” A moment’s reflection usually helps us to realize that was not the intention of the narrative. A loving God does not harden hearts. Moses genuinely gave Pharoah multiple chances at God’s behest. It was not an exercise for show. If read that way, the drama loses most of its value.

Due to the ambiguity of the term omnipotence, when I take the process position that God is not omnipotent, I often have trouble helping even very educated people understand what the problem is. The term omnipotence shifts like a Daedalus statue depending on the context of the discussion. And very often people don’t use the term omnipotence in the bad sense.

We have to take a moment and let it sink in: omnipotence literally means that God has all the power so that we would have none. At least Calvin was straightforward in understanding that. Everything that happens, according to Calvin, happens because God planned it that way. We sin because we’re made to sin by God and then we’re punished for it. But most believers prefer to muddy the waters of omnipotence because a literal understanding makes no sense.

God is love. The metaphysics of love requires that there be interpersonal relationships. That means that God is not the ultimate lonely, impersonal architect (or mechanism) that pantheism would suggest. God’s loving nature requires that there be someone to love and to be in relationship with. A world of real beings with real power living in a world of adventure is required. It is metaphysically impossible for there to be love, or even a plurality of beings, in a mechanical world where God’s power is the only power. Love is interpersonal. Love requires more than one person with the power to love and the capacity to be loved.

And if there were no adventure, there would be no need for love and guidance. There is a purpose in life. We are here to help creatively bring about ever greater value to the universe. To the extent that God helps us to do that, God becomes more perfect. I have called this the growing perfection of God.

Nonetheless, people are emotionally attached to what Whitehead called this “metaphysical compliment” of God. God is most powerful. This immense power is what is referenced by the Hebrew El Shaddai, which is then mistranslated as God Almighty. But it is true: “How Firm a Foundation” is the Lord for us! The third verse of that glorious hymn says:

Fear not, I am with you. Oh, be not dismayed,

For I am your God and will still give you aid;

I’ll strengthen you, help you, and cause you to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

There’s power and truth in those words. It is uplifting! But let’s consider the words. If God were literally omnipotent, with all the power there is, then we would fear not, not because God will give us aid, but because there’s nothing we can do about any of it. God wouldn’t give us aid except to the extent that it was predetermined. We wouldn’t be genuine persons struggling through the adventure of life anyway. God would make us suffer or rescue us on a mechanical whim.

But that’s not what is intended in these lyrics. God will strengthen us. God, as the source of all power, in other words, will empower us further by helping us discover the power that lies within us. And we will stand! The implication in this standing is that we will find, with God’s help, our own newly strengthened legs to stand on. And this all happens because we are upheld by God’s righteous, most powerful hand. The only way to believe any of that is to realize that we do not mean by omnipotence the literal meaning of God having all the power.

I do not want to struggle to get people to give up omnipotence as a cherished metaphysical compliment to God. But it is extremely important that people understand the ambiguity involved and realize that we are using omnipotence in the sense of being most powerful and not literally being all powerful.

The enemies of theism do not work with ambiguity here. They know the literal meaning. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968. It was one the most horrible days of American history where one of the truly great servants of God was shot down and prevented from doing further good as an active participant in that history. The enemies of theism will ask: “Did God cause the assassination of Dr. King? If so, God is a murderer.” But if we object that God gives us freedom, the enemy of theism will retort, “Are you saying that God, as omnipotent, could have prevented this assassination, but instead stood by and watched to see what people would do with their freedom?”

Well, of course not. There is no way to hold on to the literal meaning of omnipotence and win this argument. The enemy of theism loves the literal meaning of omnipotence. “See!” they will say, “God as perfectly benevolent and omnipotent does not exist!”

Theists who want to hold onto the idea of omnipotence, despite the logical impossibility of it being literally true, often mistakenly respond that if God were not omnipotent, then God would seem, by implication, to be impotent in history and the unfolding of any of our lives. But this is a false dilemma. God is most powerful. In the unfolding of a tragedy, such as the King assassination, God was guiding all the actors in this very real story. This is where amipotence comes into play. Thomas Jay Oord has used this term to direct us to the power of love.

The power of love was no doubt guiding Dr. King to do what was best for him on that fateful day. The power of love was also guiding the assassin away from committing this dreadful murder. God is angered and frustrated by sinful disobedience, our misdirected loves, and proud arrogance that plays a role in the hardening of hearts. God lovingly guides and we pay a price individually and collectively when we fail to cooperate with, and participate in, the power of love.

This is the nature of karma from a Christian perspective. When we participate in the power of love, we create the Beloved Community. When we misdirect our love, as Augustine observed that we do, we break the Beloved Community and create a hell for ourselves and others.

I do not think that believers will soon give up on words like omnipotence and almighty. And I don’t think we have to. We just have to be clear that we do not mean omnipotence literally. God is most powerful, far exceeding any other power. God’s loving power called a universe into being. God’s loving power coordinates a plurality of beings of power into an unfathomably rich creation of beauty and value. God is the Alpha and the Omega. Only God exerts powerful influence on the universe from its beginning to the end. Other beings are extremely finite in power and in influence on the course of history.

God’s loving power is such as to turn all evil to good eventually. God’s loving power can take us from any hell into the Beloved Community. But it requires our cooperation. This is the nature and metaphysics of love.

Bio: Olav Bryant Smith is a philosophy instructor at California State University, Chico and Butte College, as well as the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Corning, California. A student of John Cobb and David Ray Griffin in the process tradition, he is the author of Myths of the Self: Narrative Identity and Postmodern Metaphysics.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Olav Bryant Smith makes a strong argument against the common view of omnipotence—the claim that God possesses all power. He notes there is no biblical evidence for this idea, and it profoundly contradicts lived experience. When evil occurs, believing God is both all-powerful and all-loving becomes untenable. Like Olav, I think it makes better sense to start with love and affirm that it is metaphysically impossible for God’s power to be the only power. Love, by nature, requires others. The metaphysics of love call for cooperation, inviting creation itself to participate in the ongoing work of goodness and transformation.

For more on Oord’s view a metaphysics of love and Keith Ward, see this article.

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