The Amipotent God is Neither Externally Nor Voluntarily Limited

In my systematic theology of love, I argue that believers should reject the idea God is omnipotent. They should embrace the notion that God’s power is uncontrolliong love. I call this “amipotence:” ami=love; potence=power. The amipotent view stands between two adjacent concepts of divine power.

SECOND ALTERNATIVE TO AMIPOTENCE

One concept says God’s power is limited by external forces, laws, or actors. On this view, something outside deity limits divine abilities. Those limits may be the laws of nature, Satan, principalities and powers, systems, or forces. Whatever the source, this view says God is externally constrained.

Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead are often interpreted as saying that factors external to God limit what deity can do. Whitehead says God is “in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground,” for instance, “which is the creative advance into novelty.^[1]” Although he does not consider creativity an object, many interpret Whitehead as placing external limits upon deity.^[2]

Charles Hartshorne says power is shared by God and creation. This involves “a division of power,” he says, that “permits distribution of powers among a plurality of beings.”^[3] This means creatures limit what God can do. It’s not clear whether Hartshorne thinks creaturely power arises independently of God’s creating, sustaining, or loving, but some of his writings suggest this.^[4]

David Ray Griffin points to metaphysical laws as the fundamental reason God is limited. “There are metaphysical principles which are beyond even divine decision,” says Griffin.^[5] This leads John Polkinghorne to reject Griffin and “process theology’s conception of an external metaphysical constraint upon the power of deity.” A superior vision, says Polkinghorne, should maintain “that nothing imposes conditions on God from the outside.”^[6]

SECOND ALTERNATIVE TO AMIPOTENCE

The second alternative to amipotence says God voluntarily self-limits. On this view, God is essentially omnipotent but freely chooses to self-restrain, withdraw, or allow creatures their space and agency. Most who affirm voluntary divine self-limitation also say God occasionally controls when events are important enough to warrant it.^[7] This might mean intervening to do miracles, punish, rescue, or bring about an eschatological victory.

Polkinghorne explains what voluntary divine self-limitation entails. God’s “act of creation involves a voluntary limitation,” he says, “in allowing the other to be.”^[8] This means, “God does not will the act of a murderer or the destructive force of an earthquake but allows both to happen in a world in which divine power is deliberately self­-limited to allow causal space for creatures.”^[9]

The voluntary self-limitation view of divine power fails in many ways. It does not solve the problem of evil and other problems derived from omnipotence. Saying God doesn’t will evil but allows it is a distinction without a real difference. An omnipotent God must want the evil He allowed more than some other outcome this deity could secure singlehandedly. A God who can decide events by fiat is ultimately responsible for what occurs. There’s no ultimate difference between an omnipotent God allowing evil and willing it. Therefore, a voluntarily self-limited God who permits evil is culpable for failing to prevent it.

AMIPOTENCE DESCRIBES GOD’S NATURE

Rather than portraying God as externally or voluntarily limited, amipotence says God’s inability to control derives from the divine nature.^[10] Because uncontrolling love comes logically first among divine attributes, and because the Spirit loves everyone and everything at every moment, God can’t control anyone or anything at any moment. The Spirit can’t control, because love doesn’t control.

Systematic theologies embracing voluntary self-limitation ask whether God will give power, agency, and/or freedom to creatures. An omnipotent but self-limited God could exert all power, if He chose. By contrast, amipotence assumes the Spirit always and necessarily loves by providing power, agency, and freedom to creatures and creation. Amipotence, by necessity, respects the otherness of creatures, because the Spirit loves all.

Theologies of voluntary divine self-limitation ponder whether God will choose to control creatures from time to time. The deity of these theologies occasionally overrides others, or He chooses not to give creatures power. An amipotent Spirit, by contrast, necessarily gives and can’t control others.^[11] A loving God can’t.

CONCLUSION

This systematic theology of love retains the advantages for theodicy found in the work of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and Griffin. Each of them says God can’t stop evil singlehandedly. But instead of saying God’s inability to prevent evil derives primarily from creativity, pluralities of power, or metaphysical laws, amipotence says the Spirit’s inability to control others derives primarily from the divine nature of love.

When uncontrolling love has priority in God, the Spirit can’t control anyone or anything at any time.

(This is a small section of a chapter in my systematic theology of love. For the full chapter arguing for God as amipotent rather than omnipotent, subscribe to my Substack account.)

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^[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 349.

^[2] While creativity is not an object or entity but is the fundamental force empowering all actual entities, the fact that Whitehead says creatures are also in the grip of creativity means that some nondivine reality or another limits what God can do.

^[3] Charles Hartshorne, “Is Whitehead’s God the God of Religion?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 41–52.

^[4] John B. Cobb, Jr. makes a similar argument. See “Amipotence vs. Omnipotence,” in Amipotence: Support and Criticism, vol. 1. (Grasmere, Id.: SacraSage, 2025).

^[5] David Ray Griffin, God, Power, and Evil, 298.

^[6] John Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation and Divine Action,” in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, John Polkinghorne, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 96.

^[7] Not Even Once/Non-Interventionist God. Philip Clayton is an exception to the view that God occasionally intervenes. Clayton believes God created the universe out of nothing, but God never intervenes nor controls — “not even once” — thereafter. I address Clayton’s view in various writings. My primary criticism is that Clayton seems to assume as necessary attributes in God’s nature related to divine love for creation that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo deems contingent. For my criticism, see Thomas Jay Oord, “Eternal Creation and Essential Love,” in T&T Handbook on Suffering and the Problem of Evil, Johannes Grossel and Matthias Grebe, eds. (London: T&T Clark, 2022).

^[8] John C. Polkinghorne, “Chaos Theory and Divine Action,” in Religion and Science, W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 249.

^[9] John Polkinghorne, “Kenotic Creation and Divine Action,” 102.

^[10] The Given. Amipotence differs from Edgar Sheffield Brightman’s notion of The Given in God’s nature. While Brightman helpfully says divine limitations are neither external nor voluntary, he hypotheses the Given as a “passive element” in God’s nature. See The Problem of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1930), 113.

^[11] Martin Luther King, Jr. Amipotence agrees with Martin Luther King, Jr. when he says, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” It agrees with King that “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” Amipotence adds that in God, love enjoys conceptual primacy. Although powerful, God cannot overpower when implementing justice.