The Prevenience of Amipotence

This essay appears in the second volume of Amipotence: Expansion and Application available in soft or hardcover.

The power of amipotence is prevenient grace, which invites us into the work of new creation.

I am a disciple of Jesus. There is a lot of crust and not a little baggage with a phrase such as this. But it is also a truth for my life. I follow the Way of the Galilean revealed in the Christian scriptures. In this context, I must center any understanding of God. Within my experience of God, I have journeyed treacherous roads which could derail my faith. But my personal understanding of God has shaped my response to the struggles and triumphs of life.

Some have wondered if my friend Dr. Thomas Jay Oord has corrupted my view of God. But what Dr. Oord has done is give a name and structure to my decades long experience of a God who works in kenotic love in the universe. In the Death of Omnipotence, Oord expresses that which I instinctively came to understand about God. When R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion was on the music charts, I was quite literally losing what had been my religion and beginning a journey toward a reconstructed religion centered in the way of Jesus.

I am contextually centered in a Wesleyan-Holiness faith as a member of clergy in the Church of the Nazarene. This is where the roads led me and where I find a ministry. There are a few distinctive about this stream of Christianity, but three prominent ideas that we inherit from John Wesley are the ideas that God is love and that all of what we know of God is centered in love and that God works in the world through prevenient grace. The first idea is well known, but it still helps to illuminate the Wesleyan-Holiness concept of this. The second idea is known in pieces, but it is a key reason that an amipotent God makes sense within Wesleyan-Holiness theology.

Mildred Bangs Wynkoop explains the center of God as love within Wesleyan thought in her important book A Theology of Love. “When holiness and love are put together, the analogy of the two sides of a coin would be closer to the truth. Neither side can be both sides at the same time. Sides are not to be equated, but the obverse side is as essential to its existence as the face. Love is the essential inner character of holiness, and holiness does not exist apart from love.”[1]

From that truth we can logically move to the idea that within the framework of Wesleyan-Holiness theology, the idea of power for God is always influenced by the fact that God’s very nature and character are love. For the Wesleyan, to say God is sovereign, is to say that God’s sovereignty is expressed in love. To say that God is powerful is to say that God’s power is expressed in love. Thus the idea that God is amipotent.

Those of us who exist within a Wesleyan-Holiness context often hear that God’s love is “holy love.” The context of this phrase is typically a call to qualify God’s love as something undefinable and transcendent. But God is a transcendently immanent God and so God’s love is immanently experienced. Rather than continue with any preconceived definitions of love, I will use Oord’s from his book Pluriform Love. “To love is to act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being,”[2] God’s love seeks overall well-being. This is the love shown through the crucifixion and new creation. In the Christian scripture of 2 Corinthians 5, we see a beautiful picture of God reconciling all of creation in reconciling love. God’s love is active and present in the world. God is amipotent.

Within amipotence, the ami is love and prevenient grace is the potency of that love, as it is the vehicle by which God’s amipotence is working in the world. Dr. Oord explains: “I go beyond what God can’t do to explain what an amipotent God can. This loving God acts moment by moment, exerting causal influence throughout creation. God creates, sustains, saves, and transforms. Nothing and no one is more influential; the uncontrolling love of an amipotent God is universally active and everlasting. But the flourishing God desires requires creaturely contributions and conducive conditions in creation. A loving God needs us, because love is relational.”[3]

A return to 2 Corinthians is helpful to understand this work of prevenient grace flowing from the amipotent God. The Apostle Paul writes these words:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. (2 Cor 5:16-20 NRSVue)

The prevenience of amipotence invites us into the story of God working in the world. I imagine criticisms of amipotence include the claim that an amipotent God is impotent. But scripture reveals a God who is working in the world and invites humanity to be co-creators working toward new creation. God gives us the ministry of reconciliation which is an invitation to reconciling work of justice, care, and change. God cannot do this single-handedly or God would have done it. The passage earlier from second Corinthians shows us that humanity is part of the reconciling work of new creation. But even the initial work of creation is one in which amipotence can be witnessed.

If we examine the Genesis stories of creation, it is hard to miss the invitation for creation to respond in God’s creative work. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:24–25 NRSVue) Yes, it is God who creates, but God invites participation of the land and sea.

In terms of divine action, our participation narrows the gap that our language exposes when we talk about being the “hands and feet of Jesus.” Our participation points to Jesus as Diane LeClerc so eloquently puts it; “We are now called to re-present this love of God to any and all and to be the compassionate hands and feet of Jesus.”[4]

At the risk of attempting to tie something as expansive as amipotence up in a tidy bow, we can see how God’s power is expressed in relational love. Because love is that which promotes overall well-being, God’s power can only be expressed in love because God is love. At least that is what the writer of 1 John tells us in that letter. God’s amipotence is always at work in the world and is making all things new. Because God is amipotent, God needs creatures to cooperatively participate in this work of new creation. The power of love poured out by God is preveniently going before us as God invites us into the work of new creation. God’s amipotence is immanently prevenient.

---

^[1]. Wynkoop, A Theology of Love : The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, 352.

^[2]. Oord, Pluriform Love, 35.

^[3]. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 10.

^[4]. Leclerc, Discovering Christian Holiness. loc 4644