The Power of Love
By Kelly James Clark
I dig in my heels in defense of classical omnipotence and end up in a surprising place.
I recall the first time is studied omnipotence doctrine in a class. As a serious Calvinist, I came in believing that omnipotence meant that God could do and ultimately did all things; that is, everything is possible for God and God is the ultimate cause of everything that happens in the world, including all human acts. I persuaded myself with a modicum of understanding of secondary causes and a massive dose of mystery that God is the ultimate cause of human acts and that humans are free (and responsible to the point of eternal punishment in the fires of hell). I think that I, like many Christians, also secretly and not-so-secretly delighted in the torment that awaited our unbelieving neighbors (unlike us, the people that deserved to go to hell; God, we thought, had gotten a pretty good deal with us).
So, that class. I learned that the great Christian philosopher-theologians who believed that God is able to do anything, were quick to point out the many things that Omnipotence cannot do. They all believed, on Biblical grounds, that God cannot sin (or be tempted to sin). Augustine held that God is unable to die or be deceived; the former seems a consequence of God’s necessary existence, the latter a consequence of God’s perfect goodness. But then we’re off to the races. Anselm, for example, claimed that God cannot be corrupted, tell lies, or make the true false. Aquinas, for his part, added that God cannot move, fail, tire, make the past not to have been, make himself not to be, or do what he did not foreknow that he would do. Maimonides, in the Jewish tradition, claimed that it is impossible for God to make a being like himself. God can do everything except….
Let me note two obvious consequences. First, evidently, I can do many things that God cannot—sin and be tempted to sin, move, and produce a being like myself; I can get tired, feel anxious, and worry about my children’s future, but God cannot. It seems odd that I, who occasionally lifts weights but is far from omnipotent, can do things that God cannot do. Second, and more to the point, it seems that the concept of omnipotence is dying the death of a thousand qualifications.
Before we proceed to examine the concept of omnipotence, we should heed Peter Geach’s warning: “When people have tried to read into ‘God can do everything’ a signification not of Pious Intention but of Philosophical Truth, they have only landed themselves in intractable problems and hopeless confusions; no graspable sense has ever been given to this sentence that did not lead to self-contradiction or at least to conclusions manifestly untenable from the Christian point of view.”
While nearly every analysis of omnipotence begins by restricting God’s power to the logically possible (even God cannot make a square circle or the true false), I want to focus on those which restrict God’s power to actions that are consonant with God’s nature. The most sophisticated analyses of omnipotence hold that God’s nature constrains God from either acting or being different in various ways. That is, they affirm characterological constraints on divine power:
An omnipotent being cannot do anything incompatible with its essential properties.
This is often defended by claiming that doing something that is incompatible with one’s essential properties is impossible, and God, though omnipotent, cannot do the impossible. So, for example, because God exists necessarily, God cannot come into existence or cease existing; because God is essentially morally perfect, God cannot sin. And so on. In short, Omnipotence cannot do anything that is incompatible with God’s essential nature.
One might think, as critics of omnipotence do, that the pious impulse to believe that God can do everything has been drained of its, well, power. What’s left, when the-things-God-can’t-do circle around the drain, seems considerably less than omnipotence. But defenders of omnipotence claim that being unable to sin, change the past, not exist, worry, and make the true false are virtues, not defects, of omnipotence (of the Biblical God sort). And I affirm their intuition (though it seems that omnipotence supremus, omnipotence unchecked by divine necessity and goodness, would consider any such limitation a defect). But then one begins to wonder if we are talking about omnipotence after all. What started out as a conceptual analysis of the conceptual analysis of omnipotence prima facie has turned into a modified and mollified understanding of God, the Father Almighty all things considered. After Thomas Oord notes both the interminable qualifications on what God can do and the Biblical account of divine power, he rejects omnipotence in favor of amipotence, which affirms the priority of love over power.
But I suggest obstinance in the face of such soft-hearted objections. I suggest that we affirm the intuition that omnipotence in the Christian tradition should be understood in terms of a reflexive equilibrium between sheer unlimited power, on the one hand, and the constraints imposed on power by the divine nature (such as necessity or perfect goodness), on the other. Omnipotence, on this view, can do everything that is consonant with God’s essential nature.
But, then, omnipotence of the Judeo-Christian variety must take God’s love into account, perhaps first and foremost.[1] If God loves us like a young man yearning for his beloved (The Song of Songs) and if God is love (I John 4:16), then God’s power must be understood in ways consistent with God’s love. What do the Christian canonical texts say about God’s love? What sorts of constraints does divine love place on our understanding of God’s power?
In the New Testament we read that we are the sheep, and God is our Shepherd (John 10:1-18); as Shepherd, God cares for us, provides for us, and protects us. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that God is like a shepherd who has one hundred sheep; if one sheep is lost, God leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one that is lost; when God finds the lost sheep, he joyfully hoists it onto his shoulders and returns it to his flock (Luke 15:4).
We are, the Gospel of John teaches, God’s friends (John 15:15); friends walk side-by-side and share a common life together; friends bear one another’s burden, delight in one another’s joys, and grieve with one another’s sorrows. And we are the bride, and God is the Bridegroom (John 3:29); as Bridegroom, God pursues and woos the bride in hope that we choose Him (see, again, the Song of Songs).
The Old and New Testaments share a common metaphor of divine love—God as Father (Jeremiah 31:9, Isaiah 64:8, Proverbs 3:12; Matthew 6:9, Romans 8; Luke 11:12). Fathers, of the ideal type, bring their children up to become independent and flourishing and righteous adults. This requires, according to these paternal images, both caring discipline and nurturing and forgiving love.
Lesser known but no less significant metaphors of divine love are female images of God. I will mention just two from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament:
• “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13).
• “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).
• Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the Prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37).
Female images of the human-divine relationship affirm an intimate and maternal love relationship, different from the stereotypically stern and distant father-child relationship, of God for God’s children.
The God of the Bible is Father, Shepherd, Bridegroom, and Mother. As such, God is emotionally connected with and responsive to God’s human creatures. Finally, God loves in ways similar to the love of ideal fathers, shepherds, bridegrooms, and mothers.
Omnipotence, then, is constrained, perhaps first and foremost, by God’s essential loving nature. But then omnipotence sounds a lot like amipotence.
Bio: Kelly James Clark is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University. He is the author many books, including God and the Problems of Love.
OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE
In his beautiful essay, Kelly James Clark explores his own wrestling with omnipotence. Like me, he rejects the notion that God can “do everything.“ He believes we should restrict God‘s power to what is logically possible and what is consonant with God‘s nature. Kelly and I both seek to understand God’s power in light of love. And we both have plenty of biblical resources to prioritize love. Biblical writers not only portrayed God as loving person, but they also depict God as engaging in loving actions. These reasons are at the heart of why Amipotence offers more clarity than omnipotence.
Note: For more on “Omnipotence Qualified,” see this essay.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. I explore love, human and divine, in Raging Fire of Love: What I’ve Learned from Jesus, the Jews, and the Prophet.