Amipotence vs. Omnipotence – John Cobb

My heart sank when I heard that John B. Cobb, Jr. died on December 26, 2024. I’m told that he died peacefully, surrounded by family.

John was one of the greatest theologians of our time, and his influence upon me is immeasurable. His death made me realize how much I looked forward to sharing with him the books I wrote. John always sent a kind email note upon receiving them. He functioned as an encouraging father for me and many others.

Below is an essay John. To my knowledge, it’s the last theological essay he wrote. It’s published in volume one of a new two-volume series exploring amipotence: the power of God’s uncontrolling love. More than 140 essays are found in the two volumes.

In tribute to John, I’m posting his essay here…

Amipotence vs. Omnipotence

By John B. Cobb, Jr.

One of the strangest features of the history of Christian theology is that “the omnipotence of God” has come to be regarded as Christian orthodoxy. It is especially strange if “omnipotence” is taken to mean what it seems to mean on the surface. It can be understood to mean that God has all the power, that nothing else has any power. That would mean that the only actor is God, who then acts through many different entities, giving some of them the appearance of acting themselves. That would mean that the acts of Hitler were as much the acts of God as were those of Jesus. Whatever happens is the act of God, since there is no other power.

Some people may claim to find something of this kind in the Bible, but the claim is quite farfetched. Most readers of the Bible feel that their sense of responsibility is intensified by what they read there, not eliminated. Indeed, it is hard to think that anyone supposes that nothing resists God. Indeed, we would have to question whether anything exists besides God. Doesn’t the act of existing constitute some kind of power?

This notion of “divine omnipotence” is so different from anything to be found in the Bible that in the context of Christian theology, I simply dismiss it. What most people mean by “divine omnipotence” is that God can overrule everything else. Hitler was for a while a very powerful man who willed things very different from what God willed. But, despite appearances, God had the power to prevent him from doing things. God could end Hitler’s life at any time. He (This God is a “He.”) chose not to.

In the natural world, a volcanic eruption seems to be an expression of enormous power. This “omnipotent” God could prevent it or end it at any time. Although many entities have their own power and use it, God can make happen whatever He wishes.

This doctrine can be found in the Bible. We can recognize that there are some very powerful sinners, and that God could prevent them from acting but usually does not. We can assume that God wants to be worshipped by people for whom conforming to God’s will is a choice. If it is, then there will be occasions when they do not follow God’s purposes. We can recognize that God could create a world in which everything went just as God wished, but that would be a world of automata. God wants a world of free, spiritual beings in which creatures join their creator.

The idea that God can overrule everything, can control anything He wants to, makes it hard to explain why He allows so much evil and suffering. But Christian thinkers have succeeded in making some sense of this. I do not want to be simply dismissive of this notion, as I was of the idea of God’s having all the power. Nevertheless, I do not think that this is biblically favored or fits our experience. To say that God could make happen whatever “He” desires, that he has chosen just what we have, is difficult to reconcile with the God revealed to us in Jesus.

Does that mean that there is no reason to believe that there is a cosmic spirit that brings about much that is good? Not in my view. But the biblical emphasis, especially that of Jesus, is not on control. The more controlling power others have in my life, however well-directed, the less I am a responsible creature. What I receive from others of most importance is “empowerment” and “luring” toward the divine commonwealth. Being made aware of things that I could do that would move the world in that direction expands my freedom and the range of things I can do. It empowers me. This kind of empowerment comes to me directly and indirectly, from God. It has introduced values into the cosmos, especially in conscious creatures.

In the New Testament, at least, there is a wide consensus that God loves us. This belief that we are loved, whatever we do, when it is deeply assimilated into our being, provides a solid ground for relating to the whole cosmos and especially to the other humans. It does not guarantee that we will act generously or wisely, but it encourages us to open ourselves to God’s ever-present love. Finding ourselves loved enables us to love others.

An important Christian teaching is that when someone feels loved by others, she or he can love others. There is no doubt that this is important and basically true. Of course, matters are never simple. There are many kinds of love and perhaps not all of them make us loving. But there is a strong tendency for those who feel secure in their relations with other people to love them. If we know that God loves us, it is much more likely that our feelings toward God will be loving. But also, we are more likely to love God’s other beloved creatures.

Jesus thought his most distinctive teaching was that we should love our enemies. We might say that someone you love cannot be your enemy, so that this is nonsense. However, the world may be so organized that competition takes place inevitably, or we may find that we have mutually incompatible goals. Very often, when there is a competitive element in relations, our description of the other is cast in negative language. Most Americans currently have a quite negative view of China for that reason. The world needs China and the United States to cooperate in making global changes. But a politician is likely to secure more votes by being “tough on China” than by proposing cooperation. For years Biden wore a big button announcing that China is our No. 1 enemy. Jesus encourages us to find ways to work together on global crises. This will not be hard if we love each other despite the negative publicity.

If we love each other, we will adjust our actions to what heals the planet. If both nations put the healing of the Earth above the question of who dominates, the chances of dealing wisely with our global crises will be greatly improved. Jesus may indeed prove to be the savior of the world.

It seems that most people do agree that healing the Earth, at this time when it is in danger of dying, is more important than who has the most controlling power. Continuing the dominance of competition between the United States and China misdirects many resources. It has thus far prevented the two countries from thinking together about how they can lead the world in a sustainable direction. We can change that. Should we? I think so.

The title suggests that this “amipotence” is a kind of opposite to “omnipotence.” That confuses the discussion. The opposite of omnipotence is multiple independent sources of power. That is the commonsense notion of human societies and of the natural world. Especially if one thinks of a world of substances, each exercises power just by existing. Its location in one place excludes other things from that place. To pass through an occupied space, it must push other substances aside. This is the kind of power most commonly suggested by the word “omnipotence.” But it requires resistance in order to exist.

The opposite of “omnipotence,” which concentrates power all in one entity, is something like “distributed power.” “Amipotence” rarely enters into this discussion. One can imagine thinking of love as the form of power that is either concentrated or distributed, but in the discussion of concentrated vs. distributed power, the topic of love rarely appears. The discussion usually treats “power” entirely physically. Motives, goals, feelings, and purposes are not considered. The world being considered is the objective one.

The opposite to the objective world is, of course, the subjective one. There has long been a sense that the language of causality belongs to the objective world. “Amipotence” belongs to the subjective world. They are not opposites because they are mutually irrelevant. I am very glad that this simple exclusion of subjective matters from relevance to the objective world is losing its hold. But to consider them as opposites would require a lot of background change and other matters.

We Whiteheadians think Whitehead rethought these matters in a satisfactory way. But we must remember that most of our readers are not at home in our world of thought and language. We think that everything has both objective and subjective aspects. Emotions are profoundly subjective, powerful participants in the objective world. Abstracting them from the world for the purposes of science is falsifying them. Explaining what happens in the world, including the animal world, based simply on what is objective, is inherently falsifying.

When we visit, all kinds of things are going on in you that I cannot see or hear or touch or smell. They include your seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling. They also include your thinking and imagining. For you, they are subjective experience. For me, all your subjective experience is part of my objective world. We think that to be at all is to be a highly selective creative synthesis of all the events in your past. Those events were all subjects emerging out of a world of subjects and objectifying them. In the moment of occurrence, they are subjects objectifying their worlds. In the next moment, they are part of the world being objectified by their successors.

When we ask what the actual world is, the answer is that it is always the emerging of new subjects objectifying what has been. To locate it either as subjective or objective is to misrepresent it. It is always a myriad of subjects becoming objects and objects becoming subjects. Always relations, always process.

This means that explanations in both subjective and objective forms can be valid if they are not formulated exclusively. Because our sciences have worked so hard to stick to the objective side, it is quite appropriate to emphasize the subjective to move toward a balance. So, Richard is inviting us to move from mechanical causality to conscious experience. We shift from pushing and pulling to loving. That also fits substance thinking. The world is made up of myriads of entities. For a substance to be is for it to have some power. This power can be exercised either lovingly or cruelly, or in many other ways.

To understand “amipotence” we need to take two steps. First, we understand that there are forms of power that do not determine their outcome. If a parent offers a child a choice between playing baseball and going to a movie, the child’s power is increased, since without the parent’s offer, neither was possible. In explaining God’s power, we often are referring to this kind of situation. Second, the parent adds to what the child may choose, thus empowering the child. If we think that God enables us to love others, we will certainly include our expanded empowerment among God’s gifts to us.

So where the increase of the power most people first think of when they hear omnipotence reduces the freedom of those on whom it is exercised, the increase of amipotence increases the power of the receiver. Let us celebrate God’s amipotence toward us. Let us rejoice that we are given more amipotence toward human friends and even toward human enemies.

(Click on the graphic for information on the books.)