THREE TYPES
OF DIVINE POWER (DP)
DP1: God is the only subject of power–the active,
immediate, and originative cause of all things and events.
Proponents: Luther, Calvin, Barth, Brunner, Carl Henry
(leading American conservative evangelical theologian).
DP2: God could exercise all power, but chooses to
delegate power to a self-regulating nature and self-determining moral agents.
But God can use his "veto" power (switches to DP1) to harden hearts, cause
miracles, bring history to an end, and administer final justice.
Proponents: Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, Arminius,
Leibniz, Kant, and many contemporary philosophers and theologians.
DP3: God has all possible power in a universe of
autonomous nature and moral wills. In this view genuine freedom requires
complete immunity from divine coercion and intervention. God does not have
"veto" power.
Proponents: Process theologians (Whitehead, Hartshorne,
Cobb, Griffin), feminist theologians, and Plantinga.
Charles Hartshorne on DP3: "It has been customary to say
that we must limit divine power to save human freedom and to avoid making
deity responsible for evil. But to speak of limiting a concept seems to imply
that the concept, without the limitation, makes sense. The notion of a cosmic
power that determines all decisions fails to make sense. For its decisions
could refer to nothing except themselves. They could result in no world; for
a world must consists of local agents making their own decisions. Instead of
saying that God’s power is limited, we should rather say: his power is
absolutely maximal, the greatest possible, but even the greatest possible
power is still one power among others, is not the only power. God can do
everything that a God can do, everything that could be done by ‘a being with
no possible superior’" (The Divine Relativity, p. 138).
CRITIQUE OF DP1: DIVINE OMNICAUSALITY–THE
MONOPLIST POSITION.
I. NO FREE WILL. Luther and Calvin concede this
point straight out. Lu�ther: "By the omnipotence of God. . . I do not mean
the potentiality by which he could do many things which he does not [our DP2],
but the active power by which he potently works all in all. . . This
omnipotence and the foreknow�ledge of God, I say, completely abolish the dogma
of free choice" (Luther’s Works, vol. 33, p. 189).
II. GOD IS THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. Luther: "Since. . .
God moves and actuates all in all, he necessarily moves and acts in Satan" (Weimarausgabe,
vol. 18, p. 709). Is. 45:7 (AB): "I form light, and I create darkness: I
produce well-being, and I create evil, I Yahweh do all these things."
III. DP1 IMPLIES PANTHEISM. Aristotle:
Power=Actuality=Existence.
CRITIQUE OF DP2: POWER SHARING WITH A TWIST
I. VIOLATES SECOND FORM OF CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE.
God’s use, or even possible use of veto power, constitutes using persons as
means to divine ends. J. L. Mackie: "If [human wills] are really free, this
must mean that even God cannot control them."
II. BOTH DP1 AND DP2 ARE WEDDED TO CREATION OUT OF
NOTHING. Both the value of persons and nature is undermined if nature, now
taken to have intrinsic value by ecological ethics, is simply a means to divine
ends. Epitomized in the medieval view of private property–following a divine
model–as the right to create and destroy–to use and abuse–the fruits of the
earth.
III. DIVINE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVIL. Nelson Pike’s
driver training analogy. Why doesn’t the traditional God eliminate unnecessary
evil? The process God cannot intervene; the traditional God can, but doesn’t.
IV. CAN WE MAKE DIVINE POWER SHARING INTELLIGIBLE?
See electric circuits. Problems with Power Plant Analogy.
CRITIQUE OF DP3
I. DP1 GOD AS TYRANT, BUT DP3 GOD AS WIMP. The
process God cannot prevent the destruction of the world.
II. DAVID BASINGER’ CRITIQUE: How can it be that
people can coerce, but the process God cannot? And isn’t coercive power
necessary sometimes? Short answers to both: l. a person needs a body in order
to coerce, and God has no body; 2. yes, coercive power is sometimes necessary,
but only embodied beings can exercise it.