Is God omnipotent? This theologian's answer: 'Nope'

One of the women in a weekly Bible study of which I'm part is fond of declaring God's omnipotence by saying this: "God can do anything." Or: "God can do anything he wants."

Thomas Jay Oord, author of a new book called The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, begs to differ. And he makes a persuasive case.

Oord, who teaches at Northwind Theological Seminary in Florida, asserts that the idea that God is omnipotent, or all-powerful, "leads some to unbelief and despair. To those who suffer intensely, a God who can eliminate pain is asleep on the job. Or this deity doesn't care enough to rescue the hurting from horrors and holocausts. Fervent prayers for healing go unanswered; cries from the abused elicit few divine rescues; children are not protected. Consequently, many people have no desire to live forever with a God who allows evil now."

In fact, he argues, "Christian scripture does not support omnipotence. It doesn't teach that God has all power; it says there are many things God cannot do."

Oord then provides a rather long list of things he says God can't do, starting with the illogical, like creating a stone so heavy that God can't lift it, but then moving on to more practical things, such as: God cannot die. God cannot sin. God cannot lie. God cannot change the past. God cannot do pushups. And on and on.

So if God isn't omnipotent, what word might be a better description? Oord proposes amipotence, a word he coined to show that God is full of love. I believe it's pronounced am-IP-otense. The "am," he says, is pronounced like the first syllable in the name of the city of Amsterdam.

"We best define the love in amipotence as acting intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being," he writes. "The definition applies to both divine and creaturely love. The love God and creatures express, in other words, acts with intention, relates with others and aims to promote flourishing. And because love is inherently uncontrolling, neither divine nor creaturely love controls. Love cannot be omnipotent."

A primary reason to abandon the idea of divine omnipotence, Oord says, is the old problem of evil, which theologians call the theodicy question. It asks why, if God is good and all-powerful, is there evil and suffering in the world. Doesn't God care?

An omnipotent God, in Oord's description, has the power to abolish evil and yet evil continues to make a wreck of countless lives. So Oord's answer is to give up on omnipotence as one definition of God's attributes because, as he writes, "the Bible does not sanction the view that God exerts all power, can do absolutely anything or controls."

Oord goes back into the Jewish scriptures to test this idea and concludes that the famous rabbi, the late Abraham Joshua Heschel (pictured here), has it right that "the idea of divine omnipotence. . .is a non-Jewish idea." And, as Oord argues, some of this misguided idea goes back to mistranslations of the original Hebrew in the Bible. I won't go into all that here, but it's a section of the book well worth reading. But even New Testament writers, Oord writes, "do not use words that mean 'omnipotent,' 'almighty' or 'all-powerful'. . .Omnipotence isn't in the New Testament."

To extend that argument about the New Testament, Oord says that in Jesus Christ "we find a God who does not dominate. God is made known to us in the one whose crucifixion on a cross. . .demonstrates divine weakness. . .The life, death and resurrection of this humble Nazarene display strength and weakness but not control."

In the end, Oord insists that the phrase "'God can do whatever God wants' is empty puff."

Another problem with the idea of an omnipotent God, he writes, is that it "also supports the false claim that the Bible is inerrant." Biblical inerrancy is problematic for countless reasons, as I wrote in this recent blog post and in this one.

So why is the idea of divine omnipotence so prevalent? Oord's answer is that it "remains on life support due to high church liturgies and low church piety, which shape the theologies of countless people."

People have three choices about God, Oord says: "An impotent God would watch from afar or be present without engaging. An omnipotent God would control, always or on occasion, and therefore be responsible for all that occurs, both good and evil. The amipotent God loves by empowering and inspiring, and part of the evidence for the strength of amipotence comes in positive creaturely responses."

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ANTISEMITISM GETS INCREASINGLY COMPLICATED

The subject of antisemitism has become increasingly difficult to understand and even discuss, in part because of the Hamas-Israel war and all of its complications. For instance, as this Jerusalem Post article reports, at the recent annual convention of the Association for Jewish Studies, "the war weighed heavily during the conference, turning historical issues into debates very much of the moment. A presenter would be discussing, say, Jewish attitudes about contraception in the 1950s and be asked why Jewish concerns about safety are ignored by campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs."

There is, naturally, anger among Israelis and anger among Palestinians, and anger always complicates rational discussion and understanding. Coming to some common understanding about what constitutes antisemitism today may require the end of the current war. In the meantime, one good source for understanding what can be understood about modern antisemitism is the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University. I commend the institute and its programming to you. Just don't expect to agree with all its presenters about everything.

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P.S.: You can get an email notice each time my blog publishes (almost always on Wednesdays and Saturdays) simply by clicking here and signing up for that.

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ANOTHER P.S.: By the way, in case you're keeping track, with my recent weekend Dec. 22-23 blog post, I began my 20th year of writing "Faith Matters." So if you're new to the blog and want to see what you've missed, well, you have lots of archives to get through. You can start that process here.

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A POSSIBLE RECORD 3RD P.S.: If you missed my latest Flatland column when it posted on Sunday, you'll find it here. It's about a new book on Jesus that contends he wasn't born just to die but to show us how to live.