The Ontotheological Idolatry of Love
By Jason Alvis
Might reducing the Christian God to having a “most important” character trait run the risk of ontotheological idolatry?
Some find Open and Relational Theology contradictory for its insistence on both God´s intimacy and limitation. In response to past dominion theologies, Open theists emphasize the significance of how God will not solve all our problems. Yet precisely because those problems are not solved, it makes God´s intimate and caring entry into the world all the more significant. If not for God´s limitations, which imply a certain distance from us, there might not be a fragmented order of things to make space for intimacy. Limitation and distance from a beloved are necessary features of intimacy, care, and attention.
These twin concepts of intimacy and distant limitation also inform many of our presumptions about divine love. I know no one who would disagree that love is central for Christian theology. Yet rarely do theologians master the tightrope of avoiding both trite underestimations of love, as well as overly analytic descriptions of it. Don’t reduce love to pithy meanings. Yet don’t objectify your lovers and beloveds. Because love is so load bearing, Pinnock was right to call for the further development of Open Theism as a “model of love.”[1] Yet in doing so, we can never forget Ricoeur´s paradox: “talking about love may be too easy, or rather too difficult.”[2]
Oord´s recent developments of the concept of Amipotence walks this tightrope with a certain finesse and, in a different way, productively hems together intimacy and distance, engagement and limitation. God seeks intimacy with us, and this requires a means of relation and connection. Yet the separation of God from humans makes distance productive, instilling that God´s love is not simply analogous to our own. Oord recognizes the need to think theology anew once we dispel of the framework of an entirely impassible, all too controlling God. Although there is no precise definition of love in the Bible, Oord rightly identifies love as an overwhelmingly present character trait of divinity. This feeds his conceptualization of Amipotence, a constructively positive, kata-phatic, and Christocentric description of God. Here, Oord becomes at once executioner and midwife: Amipotence convincingly replaces those far-too Hellenized depictions of Omnipotence. Amipotence signals the ever-enduring, covenantal, and steadfast love of God marked by a sacrificial, “essential hesed.”[3]
As heir to the “potence” throne, Amipotence undoubtedly is the better ruler than omnipotence. [4] Yet there are good reasons for hesitation when we allow power still to be sutured to love. My first, knee-jerk response to Oord´s Amipotence was to worry precisely about how the continued use of “potence” may still be trafficking in too much power. After all, a too powerful love may dispel any need or space for any desire for a beloved. I have since come to appreciate, however, how Amipotence purposefully retains some version of power, so long as it is submitted to love. Divine power is not innately evil. Power is not necessarily resistant to the will of another. We should not throw out entirely any mention of power because it has been theologically abused in the past. Dunamis does not necessarily carry connotations of abuse of strength, but rather the flourishing of life via (Aristotelian) potentiality, ability, and capacity. Power can help bring love about. In some forms, it is necessary for making love relevant for us. If God is to promise love, then the social context, kingdom, or community in which love can happen somehow needs to be secured.
Still, a couple gnawing questions remain about power; namely, how power still may be going unchecked in Oord´s Amipotence due to the insistence upon love as the primary divine character trait. Might reducing the Christian God to having a “most important” character trait in general run the risk of ontotheological idolatry? Could simply switching power with love, omnipotence with Amipotence, inadvertently submit love to the rules of power in theologizing? And finally, if the answer to both questions is “yes”, then why should we care?
Ontotheological Idolatry?
At the risk of oversimplification, the “ontotheological critique” concerns coming to the realization we harbor mostly hidden, conceptual idols. These are not idols of gold, wood, or iron. They are idols hiding in the mental furniture of the mind. These are conceptual idols that we worship as static, effectively dead. [5] When Heidegger critiques all of metaphysics as being concerned only with “the beingness of beings” (die Seiendheit des Seienden) he points to how we have this nasty preference for what exists and does not change.[6] So far, so good – – if we can avoid referring to God as an object or flat “being,” then we´re in the clear.
Most of the time, when Theologians are asked about the gravity of ontotheology on theology itself, they point to how ontotheology can be overcome by replacing this metanarrative of “Beingness” or this stativity of things, with a more friendly, dynamic, and fluid way of interpreting God. An easy solution often is to use “love” as the replacement concept for “Being.” When thinkers like Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Milbank propose the replacement of “Being” with “givenness”, they often point to the importance of freeing God from the chains of obligation that damn our ability to think and feel. Givenness privileges personal relationality over steadfast, repeatable, universal, and logical concepts. Giving disrupts any “existent”, given-present through its vision of potential or what could be-given. Since Open Theism focuses on the relational qualities of a personal God whose “loving” comes before “being”, it often is presumed that this understanding of God allows us to forego the security checkpoints of Ontotheology.[7]
This confidence, I worry, is ill placed. If love becomes the primary, assured depiction of God, then onto-idolatry once again threatens our thinking. This could veer Open Theism back into an Ontotheological confidence precisely through that which it sought to avoid: power. Open Theists want to avoid those ontic “power” descriptions of steadfast being. Open Theists want to take emphasis away from “all powerful” depictions and concepts of God. If love is to be a “basis” of theological thought, then this ought to change the very means by which one goes about theologizing about centers, foundations, and primary concepts. It may be that the very claim that love is a “primary” character trait of God falls prey to a foundationalist epistemology – – the very metaphysics of thought Heidegger and his postmodern followers have been railing against as idolatrous.
Thus, my concern is with the way Oord presents Divine love. Oord´s descriptions of love as pluriform are clever and erudite. “God is love” (1 John 4:7-8) and indeed “pondering love is like pondering God” (Pluriform Love, p. xi). Indeed, while there are universal qualities of love, those hundreds of New Testament passages about love are all but univocal. The multiple formations of God´s love help keep love diverse. Yet still, Oord´s insistence upon “the ultimacy of love” hits differently. Love is presented as “the locus for theology” for “it´s not hard to make a scriptural case for the primacy of love.”[8] Most recently Oord revealed one reason why he finds it important to lay emphasis upon this one main character trait: “every coherent theology privileges one or more divine attribute above others. Although many theologians try to give equal weight to each attribute, the discerning reader detects one as primary. One attribute functions in ways that require the others to be understood in light of it.”[9]
When it comes to the decision between power or love, Oord undoubtedly is right. If it comes down to a choice between only these two options, then one most certainly will prevail as the primary divine attribute. He also is right in so far as this is descriptive of how humans tend to think in the modern, Global North. However, I am not entirely convinced that this, in general is a great prescriptive rule for how humans always do or should think theologically or otherwise. Of course, in everyday life, we constantly are prioritizing things with every decision we make. Yet when it comes to prioritizing divine character traits, it seems we would be doing the discipline of theology a disservice if we did not at least look for a different model. This either-or theologizing presumes that in the battle or conflict between concepts, only one can emerge powerfully victorious.
Not long after Heidegger presented his critiques of ontotheology, Lyotard presented a French version in his critique of the “Metanarrative,” which precisely dealt with how plurality creates conflict. The metanarrative is the “big story” we like to laminate on top of all the other little, less significant stories, reading them through the lens of the big story. It is this hierarchy of stories—especially as a conceptual model for explaining knowledge and experience—Lyotard refused, mostly because it did not provide a comprehensive way of how we actually—perhaps more randomly—experience our everyday Lebenswelt. The often-posed claim that postmodern critiques of metanarratives are just fancily-clad relativism does not do justice to how those critiques may help us stave off idolatry. While Lyotard prizes plurality, he is not ignorant to the realities of conflict: “There are a plurality of discourses and narratives, but only one can be told at a time.”[10] However, by no means is this a pragmatic, prescriptive claim for how we are to succumb to metanarratives. Instead, Lyotard calls for the realization of Heterogenesis.
The question as to whether this kind of hierarchical thinking should in every case be purged from theology is essential. Again, Oord is right in so far as theologians tend to make clear what they believe to be their presumed primary character trait of God, ultimately establishing importance and unimportance. Yet if we insist that there is a primary divine character trait that rules over all the others, we may be doing injustice to that very concept. There is nothing in the definitions or concepts of “love” (biblical, philosophical, or otherwise) that would allow us to presume that it alone could insist upon itself as the primary, divine character trait. “Love” gains its strength from its inter-relation with other traits such as hope, hospitality, patience, forgiveness, relationality, the embrace of weakness, and so on. Love gains its strength through inter-relation and multiplicity rather than ‘oneness’ or centrality. Thus, if indeed love is a central divine character trait, then surely this would affect the way we go about the business of theologizing it.
Maybe when it comes to divine love, our old epistemologies simply do not work. Assuming we understand what divine love represents—with its necessity for connection, relationality, and openness—these epistemologies just seem insufficient. If love indeed is as important for the personhood of God as we believe, then at the very least, we need to think more carefully about what it means for love to be a divine character trait. So while I truly am excited about the intricate theology of pluriform love present in Amipotence, I just cannot shake the possibility of committing an ontotheological idolization of love. At the risk of hyperbole, I do not want us to become victims of God´s love.
Bio: Jason Alvis is Studienleiter for the International Seminary for Theology and Leadership in Bremen Germany, where he also teaches at the Freie Evangelische Bekenntnisschule. He is author of The Inconspicuous God (Indiana University Press, 2018), as well as over 60 publications in theology, philosophy, and cultural theory.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
I appreciate Jason Alvis’s thoughtful essay, which critiques my emphasis upon love as God’s reigning attribute. While he agrees we should prioritize power over love in God, he questions my claim that love should be the guiding principle for theology. Jason warns that prioritizing one divine trait over others could lead to idolatry. However, I believe it’s inevitable that we will prioritize certain attributes. If we inevitably prize one, I am drawn to prioritizing love—especially in the God whom John declares “is love.” For all the idolatries we may risk committing, the most compelling prizes God’s uncontrolling love.
For more on Oord’s view on love coming before power in God’s nature, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover (Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 179.
[2]. Paul Ricoeur and Mark I. Wallace, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 315.
[3]. See Thomas Jay Oord, Pluriform Love (Grasmere, Id.: SacraSage 2022), 175, 185.
[4]. Thomas Jay Oord, Open and Relational Theology (Grasmere, Id.: SacraSage, 2021), 137.
[5]. See Merold Westphal, Overcoming Ontotheology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), pp38-40.
[6]. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics” in The End of Philosophy, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper, 1973), 84–110.
[7]. J. Aaron Simmons, New Phenomenology, 671. For Simmons, “God is with-us. God is proximate to us. God is invested in us. And, as such, God is not relational in the way that a chair or a computer is—such that we navigate the world “in relation” to them. Instead, as person, God is relational in ways that are never final, but always ongoing. This is what eschews onto-theological conceptions.”
[8]. Oord, Pluriform Love, x, 4.
[9]. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (Grasmere, Id.: SacraSage, 2024), 125.
[10]. L. Boeve, Lyotard and Theology (2014), 7.