God's Omnipotence: Part 1, The Problem of Absolute Power

I recently read Katherine Sonderegger's Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of God as I'd heard that Sonderegger had an interesting take on God's omnipotence, the doctrine that God is "all powerful."

As many of you know, God's omnipotence is a snarly issue, full of controversy. So I was interested in Sonderegger's take on God's power. Across twelve posts (!!!), I'd like to wade into the issues of divine omnipotence and what I think are the big takeaways in Sonderegger's proposals.

In this post, let's briefly sketch some of the problems and issues that swirl around the issue of omnipotence. As Sonderegger observes at the start of her treatment of God's power, "But uniquely to our age, Divine Power has become a 'question,' a worry, a problem, even an offense."

Why "uniquely to our age"? Well, the Bible doesn't seem to have a problem with God's omnipotence. God's power crackles almost on every page of the Bible. Likewise, the Christian tradition doesn't have much problem with God's power. The church fathers and the medieval theologians, from Augustine to Aquinas, assume and praise God's omnipotence.

So power is a uniquely modern theological problem. Why is that?

Much of the pressure upon divine omnipotence, as Sonderegger rightly points out, comes from theodicy, the problems of suffering, pain, and evil. Theodicy, I would argue, drives much of modern theological innovation. Modern theologians, post-WW2, talk about omnipotence with the Holocaust and other modern terrors constantly in mind. The big question always haunts: How could an omnipotent God have allowed the Holocaust to happen?

Beyond theodicy, there's also our modern skepticism about power itself. As the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And if that's true for humans, would it not also be true for God? Our modern worries about domination, victimization, oppression, and exploitation make us very, very concerned about any image of God being an all-powerful Lord, Master, King, and Potentate. Such a hierarchical, top-down vision of power has been associated with some of the worst ethical abuses within Christianity, and we're rightly concerned whenever we see that vision of divine power deployed, especially when it's used to justify human arrangements of power and domination.

The upshot in all this is that divine power seems to erode our visions of divine goodness. God's power and love seem to be in some tension, if not pitted against each other in a zero sum theological game. All of which leads Sonderegger to ask, "Must God renounce power in order to be good?"

That's the question we'll be exploring.

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