The Palindrome of “Bolton”
Would Be “Notlob!”
By Simon Cross
Amipotence is welcome as a “half-truth,” but we must not give it the misplaced concreteness we gave its predecessor.
The scene is the interior of a small pet shop in late 1960’s Britain. The store owner (the actor Michael Palin), dressed in a brown shopkeeper’s coat, is smoking a cigarette behind a Formica counter when in strides John Cleese carrying a bird cage.
“‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint,” says Cleese.
So begins one of the most famous sketches of British TV comedy, as the two get into an increasingly absurd tussle over the liveliness, or lack thereof, of the ‘Norwegian Blue’ parrot which Cleese’s character has just purchased. In turns the shopkeeper attempts to convince his increasingly irate customer that the bird is ‘resting,’ ‘pining for the fjords,’ or, after Cleese has repeatedly bashed it against the counter, ‘stunned.’ What begins as an apparently straightforward satire of retail customer service soon descends into complete absurdity, resulting in an argument about whether or not Ipswich is a palindrome of Bolton.
It was, perhaps, the evident absurdity of the whole concept which earned this particular five minutes of television legendary status. Despite being more than half a century old, it remains as beloved as ever. Hardcore fans know, even if the casual observer doesn’t, that this sketch was a development of an earlier idea, a sketch called ‘the car salesman’ in which a frustrated customer finds a garage owner refusing to admit there is anything wrong with his vehicle, even as doors fall off and brakes fail.
Over the centuries a succession of irate customers have returned to the theological pet shop to complain about the parrot they have purchased. “Look, matey,” they say, with greater or lesser amounts of vehemence, “I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.”
In The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence Thomas Jay Oord is the latest in a line of discontented customers to point at omnipotence and shout “it’s stone dead!” while theological shopkeepers insist that concept of God’s absolute power over us ‘definitely moved.’ Among the line of previous customers to endure this absurd ritual was the philosopher Charles Hartshorne who showed a remarkable ability to communicate complex ideas in everyday terms in books like Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes. Oord relies, somewhat, on Hartshorne’s evidence in his own theology, noting that Hartshorne’s “common sense” claims that to exist is to exert power, and that all power is social, cast the idea of divine omnipotence into doubt.
Where Oord, Hartshorne, and others coalesce, is around the central notion: the parrot (divine omnipotence) is dead—stone dead—definitely deceased. It is an ex-idea. Much energy is expended by Oord outlining the various reasons for recognizing that the parrot is not, actually, standing upright on its perch, but has instead been nailed on. He cycles through the various absurdities of divine omnipotence as a concept, before concluding, ultimately, in the final paragraph of the book that “omnipotence is dead.” This, however, is not the whole of his argument, for Oord continues with a conjunctive preposition: “But amipotence can live.” He insists.
Amipotence is Oord’s neologism. Not satisfied with demonstrating his discontent with omnipotence, Oord seeks to develop a “a plausible account of who God is and what God does.” Thus he derives amipotence, a word that stresses “the priority of love over power in God.” Love compels the divine, he argues, because this is God’s very nature, and it is impossible for God to be anything other than God. This is not a claim with which I would seek to differ.
One of the things that this argument does well is to address a problem that Alfred North Whitehead complained about in Process and Reality. “The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar,” he grumbled. Whitehead, too, denied that the exertion of absolute power was compatible with the concept of deity that arises from, and within, the Christian tradition. Describing what he called ‘the Galilean origin of Christianity’ Whitehead said that “the ruling Caesar” was not part of that way of thinking, neither was the profoundly Aristotelian idea of “the unmoved mover.” This alternative, ‘Galilean’ concept of the divinity, said Whitehead, “dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved…”
The sense that the divine does not conform to the restrictions of ‘omnipotence,’ as generally understood, is a thread that runs through process relational theology. However, that Oord does a good job of addressing the failings of this particular idea, does not mean one should, necessarily, accept the concept of amipotence as a straightforward replacement.
Writing in Relational Hermeneutics, a collection of essays by Pacific Island scholars, the Samoan theologian Upolu Vaai notes that Pacific islanders refer to something which is complex and complicated as a ‘bony fish.’ Surely, we might think, there can be few fish more bony than the question of the nature of the divine. In the same book Vaai describes the problematic colonial epistemology of a ‘one truth ideology’—an idea he previously developed elsewhere.
The basis of a ‘one truth ideology’ is that there’s one system, one idea, or one concept that satisfies everything. If this is the case, then the question simply becomes ‘can we find it?’ The search then begins for the one truth that explains everything. The idea that there is an answer, “a plausible account” which, in itself, is satisfactory for any given question is predicated on the ‘one truth ideology.’ The relational wisdom arising from the Pacific, and elsewhere, is that this ideology is flawed—the fish is, after all, extremely bony.
In both Adventures of Ideas and Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead speaks of ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.’ Whitehead uses this term to critique his own favored philosophers, Henri Bergson among them, who, he asserts, sometimes mistake the abstract for the concrete. They are, in other words, too definitive. Hartshorne, too, seems to take this approach. In The Logic of Perfection he argues that we should rid ourselves of terms such as omnipotence precisely because they are distortions, they actively obscure a truth they purport to communicate. All descriptive terms have this danger, the more definitive they are, the greater the danger. Hence, perhaps, Cusansus’ preference for the vague ‘posse ipsum,’ or Keller’s for the ‘possibility of the impossible.’
When John Cleese confronts the shopkeeper with the evidence of his lifeless parrot, he is not really engaging with a ‘bony fish.’ He’s not undertaking a complex philosophical discussion about the nature of ‘parrotness.’ Rather, he’s dealing with an essentially binary question, namely: ‘is this parrot, a ‘Norwegian Blue’ no less, alive or not?’ Palin’s shopkeeper responds with a host of absurd arguments before he ultimately concedes: “Well, I better replace it, then…” Cue an argument about the palindrome of Bolton.
The nature of divine ‘power’ is a much bonier fish than Monty Python’s dead parrot, but there is some comparison. Omnipotence is clearly a dead concept, kept alive only by successive generations of theological shopkeepers nailing its carcass to the perch. “We need a replacement [for omnipotence]” Oord argues. With respect, I do not altogether concur. The danger of making such an attempt is made clear in the dead parrot sketch, it invites the development of fresh absurdities.
To accept the need for a replacement, I feel, or perhaps fear, is to accept the epistemic ‘one truth ideology’ that relational theologians from the Pacific, and elsewhere, point out has brought so much trouble to their door. I fear, too, that developing such a term is to invite the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, to solidify a concept which must remain fluid, mobile and vague.
Raimon Panikkar wrote: “no period in human history has had the ‘last’ word, each word has a certain working validity in and for its own time. The same can be said of every author and every statement.”
I could, I think, endorse Oord’s concept of amipotence but only if we are asked to accept it, precisely, on these limited terms: as a word “in and for its own time.” To think of it as something which provides a solution to the bony fish of divine nature, it presents us with the potential for misplaced concreteness, and that is something we must, wherever possible, guard against.
“All truths are half-truths.” Whitehead said, adding: “It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”[1] On that basis I cautiously welcome the half-truth of amipotence as a word in, and for, its time—but urge that we don’t treat it as if it’s something it isn’t, and cannot become. At the same time I continue to hope, most sincerely, that we will, one day, no longer need to endure the absurdity of trying to return the dead parrot of omnipotence to the theological pet shop. It has quite clearly “joined the bleedin’ choir invisible.”
Bio: Simon Cross is an ordained minister in the United Reformed Church and is chair of the Progressive Christianity Network (Britain). Simon is a former professional journalist and social scientist turned pastoral theologian with a doctorate in process relational theology. Some of his writing can be found at simonjcross.substack.com. Simon and his family live in Yorkshire, UK.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
Simon Cross investigates the demise of omnipotence through a British TV comedy, challenging traditional interpretations of the term. He identifies inherent problems in classic conceptions while remaining cautious about substituting amipotence as an alternative. Unconvinced that this new term can resolve every inquiry, Simon asserts that although omnipotence is obsolete, adopting amipotence risks evolving into a rigid “one truth ideology.” He contends that amipotence should be accepted only for its specific era. I appreciate Simon’s measured stance. I think that no single word can fully capture God’s reality. But I find amipotence a more apt description of divine love and power.
Note: For more on why Oord rejects absolute certainty and absolute mystery, see this essay.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (London: Max Reinhardt, 1954), 14.