Thanks to my good friend Fred Herren, last year I became acquainted with theologian Thomas Jay Oord. God Can’t (2019) is the only one of his many books that I have read in its entirety, and initially I was “put off” by the book’s title. After reading it, though, I mainly agreed with Oord’s main points.
Thomas
Jay Oord was long a pastor and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene. Born and raised in
Washington state, Oord (b. 1965) graduated from Northwest Nazarene College (now
University, NNU) in Idaho in 1988.
After
serving as a pastor of a Nazarene church for several years in Washington state,
he enrolled in Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, graduating
with a Master of Divinity. While in seminary, he was a pastor in nearby
Lenexa, Kansas.
After
earning his Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate University in California, he
taught theology at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts and then for
sixteen years taught at his alma mater (NNU). Since 2020, Oord has been directing
doctoral programs of the online Northwind Theological Seminary.*1
God
Can’t, Oord’s thought-provoking
book, is about theodicy,
the attempt to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all power and all
goodness are simultaneously ascribed to God. If God can prevent all evil, why
doesn’t a loving God do that? That is a basic problem for traditional theology.
Oord
explains his reason for writing God Can’t: “I wrote this book for
victims of evil, survivors, and those who endure senseless suffering. I wrote
it for the wounded and broken who have trouble believing in God, are confused,
or have given up faith altogether” (3).
His book, though, is also of considerable help for all of us who know people who have trouble believing in God's existence because of the suffering in their own lives or that which they see starkly in the world around them.
Oord
insists that “God loves us all, all the time.” He goes on to assert, “Every idea I
advocate in this book assumes God is loving” (11-12). This leads him to reject belief
in God’s omnipotence and to emphasize what he terms God’s amipotence.*2
According
to Oord, “God’s nature is uncontrolling love.” Thus, “God’s love is inherently
uncontrolling” (26). That is why God “can’t prevent evil
singlehandedly. God’s love governs what God can do” (27). So, here is Oord’s “Belief
#1”: “God Can’t Prevent Evil Singlehandedly” (44).*3
How
could God be considered all-loving if God could unilaterally prevent evil but didn’t
do so? By substituting amipotence for omnipotence, though, Oord concludes, “I can
whole-heartedly adore my uncontrolling Creator, knowing God neither causes nor
allows the evil I’ve experienced or know” (183).
And
then he leaves these final words: “The Lover of the Universe empowers and
inspires us to live lives of love. Let’s cooperate with this uncontrolling God
of love!” (186).
Much
more needs to be said about Oord’s challenging book, but I will mention just one more important
thing I realized afresh from reading it. Much of what Christians have said
about prayer is based on an erroneous view of God. So often God is asked to do
what an uncontrolling God cannot do.
Back
in August 2016, I wrote about this in connection with reports that Jimmy Carter
was “cancer free” after being diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2015. I
encourage you to (re-)read that post (here).
I
realize more fully now that it is simply “wrong” to pray for God to heal anyone
or to perform other “miraculous” deeds. Yes, I believe in prayer, but not prayers
that seek to change God or to “beg” God to do things that God could not do.
So,
yes, given the loving, noncontrolling nature of God, there are some/many things
God can’t do. But rather than that decreasing our devotion to God, such
realization should cause our faith in God to deepen and to strengthen our determination
to work with God for the betterment of the world around us.
_____
*1 For more detailed information about
Oord, see his website at https://ThomasJayOord.com. That site includes this recent
news: “In 2024, Oord was taken to trial in the Church of the Nazarene for being
queer affirming. The verdict was the removal of his ministerial license and
membership in the denomination.” Last August, my friend Brian Kaylor interviewed
Oord about his expulsion from the Church of the Nazarene. You can hear that interview here.
*2 In April 2023, Oord published a
new book under the title The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence.
He coined the latter word, which means all-loving, to use in place of the
former word, which means all-powerful. Christian theology has often talked
about God as being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Those are not
biblical terms, however, and Oord firmly believes that the latter term should
be replaced by his new term, amipotence.
*3 Oord’s other basic beliefs
articulated in this book: #2, “God feels our pain”; #3, “God works to heal”; #4,
“God squeezes good from bad”; and #5, “God needs our cooperation.”
Note:
Thinking Friend
Anton Jacobs reminded me that Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s bestselling book When
Bad Things Happen to Good People (1991) presents ideas quite similar to
Oord’s. I read Kushner’s book back in the 1990s but didn’t remember that
similarity while reading Oord, who does not mention Kushner.
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Thank you Leroy and Happy New Year to fellow thinking friends! For some years I have thought that when we say God is omnipotent this is a philosopher's God, not the vulnerable God we see revealed in the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus demonstrates relational power as he challenges the coercive power of the Roman Empire and its collaborators. Nonviolent resistance is about relational power.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Andrew, for being the first to post comments regarding this new blog post. (Of course, it was just after noon in England.) Thanks especially for noting that "omnipotent" is a philosophical term more than a term expressive of the life and work of Jesus. Oord's emphasis on amipotence rather than omnipotence is certainly more closely related to nonviolent resistance than the coercive power that has been so prevalent in the history of nations and empires.
DeleteThere haven't been as many responses to today's blog post as I expected by now. But not long after 7 a.m. I did receive the following from local Thinking Friend Greg Brown:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for making me aware of this book. So Oord is throwing out 2000 year old claims about God’s omnipotence? For a long time this has been one of the definitional qualities of God. A pretty big revision."
"It would appear his revision somewhat lines up with Process Theology. Both attempt to address ideas about God’s limits. For me the problem of evil remains unresolved."
Thanks, Greg, for raising meaningful issues about this morning's blog post. In response, please note that the emphasis on omnipotence is a philosophical one rather than a biblical one. "Omnipotence" doesn't appear in the Bible. The closest term is "almighty," which is used mainly in the Old Testament. In the New Testament it is used only in Revelation with one exception. Oord deals with this issue in the following online article:
Deletehttps://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/the-problem-with-almighty-in-the-new-testament.
Oord is very much aligned with process theology and was a good friend of John Cobb, one of the leaders of process theology in the U.S., who recently died. Here is a link to the helpful article Oord posted on Dec. 29, three days after Cobb's passing.
https://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/amipotence-vs-omnipotence-john-b-cobb-jr
And then about 30 minutes ago, I received an email from Bill Tammeus, the eminent Kansas City journalist:
ReplyDelete"At the bottom of my current blog post, I mention Oord and his recent book about God not being omnipotent, plus two follow up books, one of which I contributed to. Here's the link: https://bit.ly/40qsxEc
"Interesting and challenging guy, Oord is."
The reference to Oord in Bill's Jan. 8 piece is at the very end, and includes the following statements about Oord and amipotence:
Delete"A little over a year ago, I reviewed here on the blog a book that challenged the idea that God is omnipotent. Thomas Jay Oord is the author of 'The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence,' in which he argues that God, instead, is characterized by 'amipotence,' or complete love. Then Oord asked a bunch of folks, including me, to write a chapter in a book in which scholars and others (like me) would respond to the ideas in his book. So I did. Now that book is out (in two volumes). The volume in which you'll find my essay is called "Amipotence: Volume 2: Expansion and Application."
The whole idea of denouncing the concept of an omnipotent God and favoring, by contrast, an amipotent God, is intriguing ...."
Local Thinking Friend Johan Tredoux also has an essay in the book Bill mentioned.
DeleteAbout five minutes ago, a local Thinking Friend sent an email pasted below in its entirety:
ReplyDelete"Where was God when our little Laura and the Claypool’s Laura were stricken by Leukemia. God’s love is endless, but he/she cannot do everything. My mental tangle of neurons has to work overtime in processing it. How wonderful it is when a devoted scholar does this work for me/us. And that you read it and shared it with us."
This TF and John Claypool, who was pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, suffered great pain when they both lost young daughters with the same name. Where was God during that painful time? Oord would say (in connection with his belief #2 in the third footnote above), God was right there, feeling the pain with them and giving them the strength to carry on--as they both did. But Oord would say, correctly I believe, that God, who is all-loving (amipotent) did not cause the leukemia, was not using it as some sort of test or lesson for the grieving parents, and as a noncontrolling God was not able to cure it by some sort of divine fiat.
DeleteThe issue is too big for quick response, but he goes. 😊
ReplyDeleteWith apologies to Augustine:
Without love-power we are not, without us love-power does not.
I call this an aspirational commitment, not an ontological claim.
Two quotes which guide my perspective:
[E. Frank Tupper, *A Scandalous Providence* 1995.]
“Without the story of Jesus I would not believe in God. Or more probably, God simply would not matter.” (p.19)
“And what God has done in Jesus, God intends to do for all of us.” (p.438)
“In the hope of Jesus we trust the God of love. (p.439)
[George Burman Foster (1858 – 1918)]
“Jesus is the best that we know, human or divine . . . the problem is not whether Jesus is as good as God is, but whether God is as good as Jesus is.”
[I used this quote in response to your post of August 25, 2020. 😊]
Shalom, Dick
Last month we discussed Longfellow's "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" and my reply included placing omnipotence with God the Father, the creator of galaxies, black holes, and quantum mechanics. There is nothing that is without Him, but He is a bit beyond good and evil. Yet we owe everything to Him. To look at love, I would start with "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." (1 John 4:16) In Jesus we abide in love with others, and in The Holy Spirit love abides in us. The traditional theological trinity of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence just does not quite hold together. One way or another we have to find a path through theodicy.
ReplyDeleteThe bombing of Gaza has included Catholic churches. Pope Francis presented a Christmas nativity by Palestinian artists that depicts Jesus as a baby Palestinian. A few days later it was removed. I wonder how Gazans feel about the love of God today? What would Oord say? Read here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/vatican-nativity-scene-showing-baby-jesus-on-a-keffiyeh-removed-after-backlash/
"If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God. Take the even; take the odd." Mr. Nickels (Satan) in Archibald MacLeish' "JB" cited from memory, may not be exact. If I remember correctly, MacLeish wanted to hang on to omnipotence.
ReplyDeleteGot word this morning that Amy Kiker, spouse of my youngest nephew J. Frank Kiker, has passed away at approximately 60 years of age after a long struggle with malignant brain tumor and extensive blood clotting, leaing behind J. Frank and son Jett and daughter Katy, ages about 21 and 19. I participated with an Episcopal Priest in performing the wedding ceremony for J. Frank and Amy. Needless to say, I take Oord over MacLeish, amipotence over omnipotence, and, much to the dismay of CTF my OT prof, Mr. Nickels over JB.
Preceding comment is from Charles Kiker publishing as anonymous for technical reasons.
ReplyDeleteLate this morning, Thinking Friend Virginia Belk in New Mexico sent the following comments:
ReplyDelete"I don't like the words, 'God Can't.' Rather I think God Won't...Why? Because God is Love and Love won't seek revenge, nor support the revengeful, but continues to desire us to seek peaceful solutions and pursue them.
"Sometime ago, the idea that when prayers to God were not rewarded with healing and one person said, 'God didn't answer my prayer.' The other one responded, 'Maybe God said "No".'
"However, I also believe thoughts are powerful because we are what we think. When we pray for a family member or friend, we draw spiritually closer to those loved ones and to the I AM to whom we pray. The One Who Always Was welcomes our drawing closer that One and to our human loved ones; perhaps it is the aura of loving thoughts outside ourselves that heals."
DeleteThanks for your thoughtful comments, Virginia. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, I didn't like the title of the book when I first saw it. But now I think it is certainly true. It is also true that "God won't," but why? God won't do anything in violation of God's all-loving nature. But isn't it also true to say that God can't do anything in violation of God's all-loving nature? It seems to me that the meaning is the same.
If God says No to our prayers for healing (of someone's illness or our own), why would God respond in that way? If God is all-loving, wouldn't the response to a prayer for healing always be Yes? But since so many illnesses are not healed, that can only be because God won't or God can't. But if God won't, how could he be all-loving? So, it must be because God can't. That is the gist of Oord's book, and that seems correct--and very helpful--to me.
While writing the above response, I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Frank Shope, who also lives in New Mexico:
ReplyDelete"A number of yeas ago I suggested that God was a self limiting God. In order to give humanity freedom to choose for God, God has to limit what he is able to do. Tied to that limitation is prayer. Praying is like a wedge that creates a space to allow God to move within a space that is usually limited. The more people praying the greater the wedge that releases God to act.
"Needless to say. I was promptly declared a heretic by those who believe that God is in control of every detail in human existence."
Thanks for reading and responding, Frank. In years past, I have also from time to time referred to God as being self-limiting and a freedom-giving Creator. I don't think it is erroneous to make such explanations, but I now think it is better to speak of God as being inherently all-loving and completely noncontrolling.
DeleteI do see a problem, though, with saying that prayer/praying is "like a wedge." For example, especially when praying for healing (or other "miraculous" desires), I don't see how more prayers make it possible for God to act in ways we want God to act. Oord (and I) believe in the importance of prayer--but not as a way to make it possible for God to do that which is contrary to God's noncontrolling nature.
Saturday night, I received this further email from Frank:
Delete"My challenge is from an experience I had in 1995. I was in the hospital for nine days and the doctor told my wife there was nothing more that could be done. According to her testimony she launched a prayer request that went around the world. Within twenty-four hours my health made a radical recovery.
"I continue to reflect on how God used those who prayed to change the course of my personal history. On the other hand people pray for others and those prayed for die.
"Frank Tupper in his book 'The Providence of God' does bring some insight for me. So I will read your recommended book and we can discuss the 'mystery' of prayer further."
Frank, I am at a loss to know how to respond meaningfully to your comments, which I much appreciate you sharing. Upon reading it, I thought of the aphorism, "A man who has an argument is always at the mercy of a man who has an experience.”
DeleteI have written Dr. Oord to ask how he would respond to your comments, but I don't know when (or if) I will hear back from him.
It was interesting that not long before receiving your email Saturday night, Thinking Friend Tom Lamkin in North Carolina also mentioned Dr. Tupper and his book. I think Tupper was just beginning his doctoral studies as I was finishing mine, and I surely met him during that time but never did get to know him personally. I saw his name repeatedly during his many years of teaching (before his passing in 2020), but unfortunately, I have not yet read his book. His book "A scandalous providence: the Jesus story of the compassion of God" is in the library at William Jewell College here in the city where I live, and I plan to take a look at it soon.
Local Thinking Friend Ed Kail sent the following brief comments yesterday, but I failed to post them here until now:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for the post. In these later years I, too, have been moving away from a theology of God’s power and control to a theology of long-suffering love and patient transformative work."
Bro. Leroy, I deeply appreciate the comments made here that reflect in many ways my own. I am drawn to the self-limiting thought and suggest only an all-powerful God can do that in such a way that does not impact his nature, that of all-loving. The paradox of an omnipotent, omniscient God creating a free will individual will probably give us headaches for some time. My theology emphasizes God has an awareness of the future that in some fashion is not limited. Hence his "no" for today may be in response to his view of a much larger aspect of time or even eternity. That is a partial answer in my struggle with the concept of a good God being an omnipotent God and allowing evil to exist.
ReplyDeleteFrank Tupper was a primary professor of mine in seminary days. We had multiple laughs in the four courses I took under him with him being more than a little to the left of my theology. Unfortunately I lost contact with him after he went to Wake Forest Divinity School.
In my own ethic, I don't seek or try to control, change, or make-over others. It's not Love for me to make them an object of my agenda, even if I think they would benefit from doing and being my way. An important aspect of Love, as I have it, is letting people have their own process and become their own selves.
ReplyDeleteBut this love does not, cannot, exclude intervention when someone is in danger. Say, a creep is molesting a child, or I can prevent someone from doing something dangerous with the potential of harm to themselves or others. Love will not hold me back from an interfering action. It will not tell me I ought to respect the rapist's autonomy.
I would expect a God of Compassion to intervene and interfere a lot more than the Christian God does in our brutal world.
Oh, you say He expects my hands to carry out the interference while his perfect Love can't on its own.
Then there's a gulf between my less than holy Love an His.
The Pesky Problem remains, even if he's just a LDS type divinity, finite, natural, but nevertheless vastly superior as being our creator.
And if he is so unable (in the name of Love) to intervene to rescue us or snatch us from harm, or even do anything that smacks of changing our ways and circumstances, would he "so love the world that" He'd do anything Old or New Testament? If Love is so hands off, most of The Christian religion is an overreach.
You could say God finds ways to "share" himself with us. The tale from Genesis to Revelation is quite a bit more than an exchange of ideas.
I'm not impressed that Oords position answers the pesky Problem of Evil.
As for me, you know I'm a non-theist. No problem for me, because I don't believe in a Divinity that has an ego.
I believe in Grace, and that we are the hands, feet, and persons of Grace. Grace Loves through us. Intervenes and interferes for Love, but does not impose or control.