What is power in a loving relationship?
When John Calvin wrote, that he was – among other things – seeking a way for the church to be kept pure without “the Church,” thus there was great safety in the system he devised. It was a valiant effort which informs and reflects much of what I believe today, just as I am also informed and my understandings are reflected in other schools of thought. Increasingly I have a difficult time throwing out that which the great cloud of witnesses have deemed valuable. And choose instead to hold dear what various traditions present and look for the gem(s) within each.
Again, what is power in a loving relationship?
If we can work from a premise that God actually loves creation – human beings included – and is inviting all into oneness with Godself in the beauty of relationship then maybe power is presence. And in Caputo’s reworking of Derrida, “the power of God is in God’s powerlessness.”
What if God is powerless to predetermine our tomorrows, but is fully and personally present with us in each moment? Does that have to destroy our faith? Granted, it won’t help the reformed position.
Ok, so you’re saying those two notions need not held in contrast. Let’s not forget that omnipotence and omniscience were not beliefs that come to us from the Children of Israel but were Greek ideas that Christian writers borrowed. What does the testimony of Scripture better support, the idea of God’s omnipotence or God’s WITH us as the power.
So the fact that God is with me and with us experiencing all alongside us becomes a ‘tacit powerfulness.’ Not an abstracted omnipotence.
The other day I was telling a friend about our struggle with biologically birthing children. Lynette had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured followed by a number of regular miscarriages before we realized there are other ways for us to start a family. So I was telling this friend about the ectopic, and how close she was to death, and all the medical staff running around, all the blood she lost, how weak she was, etc. And what an odd privilege it was for me to be there for her and to share in this mixed bag of sadness and thankfulness. I felt utterly powerless and could do nothing but be with her and that somehow I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. My friend graciously helped me to see afresh that it may well be the powerlessness of my presence that was the power Lynette most needed.
Presence is tacit power. Omnipotence is weak substitution for the active presence of God. Reformed theology specially and much of western theology more generally so emphasis that God is all powerful that we functionally negate the gift of God’s presence.
Increasingly, I find myself choosing not to emphasis omnipotence (though God may well be omnipotent), because I believe it may remove God from the very people God what’s to call God’s own.
I am saying that what we think of as “omnipotence” and “omniscience” are not in the bible, of course we revision them in and can find lots of examples in Scripture to support such ideas (that’s the beauty of text). So for example, when the poet penned what we now call Psalm 139 the poet had no concept of omni’s in mind. The poet gave narrative voice to a “real” or tacit knowledge of God.
I imagine God weeps when little Johnny makes fun of little Suzy, in part, because God has journeyed with Johnny and with Suzy and God knows the whys and the whats that lead to that moment. I imagine God grieves, and God hopes, and God waits to find out what will happen next. Not because God is weak. But because God has so entered the human story that God’s weakness is the very strength of presence all of humanity craves.
What does the word Messiah mean? By definition it is all about presence. The promise of Messiah is the promise of God’s presence.
Bottom line, I am suggesting that maybe the omni’s (which like all theology are a human creations) may do us a disservice by making God more distant than the Scriptural narrative suggests.
Shakespeare often held the power to pardon as a greater power than to execute. We try to teach playground-bullies that the greatest strength is to NOT hit back, as someone once said, “to turn the other check.” Think of the legacy of Christian martyrdom, or the power of passive resistance in Gandhi or Dr Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks, or even of lives lived in seemingly powerless ways like Mother Teresa, etc.
If Christ is the perfect representation of the Divine how did Christ display power? Does Christ empty Christ-self in a way that the Divine does not? Or do Christ’s life and death, Christ’s use of power and Christ’s self-emptying reveal us the very nature of God?
What is the power of “The Passion”? I don’t think it would be too much to say that the power of the passion is a narrative glimpse into the powerlessness of Christ. Was Jesus acting powerless or did Jesus so empty himself that he choose to be powerless and truly was a servant, a sacrificial lamb?
If God so humbled Godself that the Christ was killed by God’s own creation and Christ was powerless to change that outcome do we not see the ultimate power of love? Omnipotence as a theological construct may be a an attempt to so distance God from our experience that we let ourselves hook for the violence we do to ourselves, each other and creation.
It is my growing belief that Kenosis is an increasingly important area of Christian doctrine. Because it is addresses the issues of power and authority from the person of God.
Peace, dwight
