We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Redefining Omnipotence
Traditional, classical theology has equated divine power with God causing and determining all things to exist. God supposedly acts on everything as their cause, but nothing in any way acts on him. Yet, these assumptions about how God causes things to exist starts in the wrong place. If we start with reason, it causes us to conceive of God as absolute power. However, if we start with the crucified Christ, we arrive at a conception of God as absolute love.
Indeed, in the absolute love revealed on the cross we are given an entirely different conception of power. The theologian Hans Urs Von Balthazar goes so far as to assert that “in the powerlessness of the Incarnate and Crucified One” we see “the shining forth of God’s omnipotence.”[1] Yet, Paul teaches that what looks powerless and foolish to natural reason is actually “the power” and “wisdom” of God (I Cor 1:18). When God puts his omnipotence on display, it appears as the foolish and weak omnipotence of self-giving love.
If we think about divine causation in terms of self-giving love rather than determining power, we would not assume that God causes agents to exist by exhaustively determining them. I submit that we should rather conceive of God “loving [agents] into existence” by making space for them. More specifically, since a loving relationship is only possible between agents that are distinct from one another and who have the power to choose the relationship or not, I submit that we should conceive of the power of God’s self-giving love refraining from determining agents precisely so they can exist distinct from him and be invested with their own morally-responsible causal power, the power of self-determination.
And, finally, I submit that this suggestion is confirmed in the fact that Jesus came as one who perfectly loved people who were distinct from him as well as in the fact that the biblical narrative consistently depicts humans as existing over-and-against God and as possessing the power of free choice.
[1.] H. U. von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. A. Nichols, U.P. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 34
Photo credit: solsken via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Love, Omnipotence
Topics: Attributes and Character
Related Reading

Love and Free Will
God could have easily created a world in which nothing evil could ever happen. But this world would not have been capable of love. God could have preprogrammed agents to say loving things and to act in loving ways. He could even have preprogrammed these automatons to believe they were choosing to love. But these…

Are We Supposed to Balance Love and Truth?
Often people say, “Yes we must love. But we must balance love with truth.” “Love has its place, but we must not forget God’s wrath.” “Love must never take the place of correct biblical doctrine.” Two points need to be made. First, if we take seriously the biblical teaching that the love command is the…

Corrective Love
drp via Compfight Kathy Escobar posted the other day about providing “corrective experiences” to those who have been hurt in the past. How many of us have approached Christians with our wounds and have been offered more of the same instead of the love and acceptance we’re longing for? How beautiful it would be if…

The Extremity of God’s Love
In response to questions he has received about whether Jesus was actually separated from the Father on the cross, Greg fleshes out his perspective on this. The love that unites the Trinity is the very same love that resulted in the separation of the Father from the Son. This separation actually expresses the great love…

The Cross is Revelation and Salvation
The way Christ saved us from the curse of the law was “by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). So too, the way Christ freed us from the condemnation of sin and enabled us to “become the righteousness of God” was by becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). Getting this point is crucial…