International Journalfor Philosophy of Religion 37: 145-165, 1995. © 1995 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Omnipotence, feminism and God PETER BYRNE King's College London, England

But for feminism, the further monarchical monotheism rationalises the object of its experiences, the more obviously susceptible it becomes to deconstruction as an anthropomorphic projection which divinises male political power. 1

Even superficial acquaintance with feminists on God reveals that there is little common ground in premises or methods of argument between the philosophical basis of the traditional concept of God and the feminist counter blast to it. Thus it is hard a p r i o r i to see how any attempt to weigh one against the other can make any progress. Nonetheless, it may well be worth the attempt to do so, in the spirit of trying to keep open some channels of communication between analytic discussions of the concept of God and the flood of feminist writing in philosophy and theology. My focus is on the attribute of omnipotence and this for two reasons. One is that it has been crucial in the feminist critique, playing a key role in confirming - for feminists - that the concept of God in philosophy of religion is not politically innocent but rather a projection of masculine attributes and goals onto a divine being. Further, it might be supposed that by looking at the critique of one attribute discussion could be narrowed down to a range of issues manageable in a single paper. This latter reason entails problems, since it is evident that the rejection of omnipotence in God as obviously a male projection is part and parcel of a wider case and may stand or fall with that case. However, a reading of authors such as Reuther, Hampson and Daly would suggest that the alleged errors in the doctrine of omnipotence are reasons for thinking that the entire, traditional concept of God has to go and thus, in turn, that the errors of omnipotence are independently discussible to some degree. However, the notion that there is an independently weighable feminist case against the doctrine of divine omnipotence faces two further difficulties. They both stem from what appears to be the curious indirection of the feminist critique. This indirection is twofold.

146 In the first place the critique seems to fasten upon the motives of those have upheld the doctrine. An account is given of how the doctrine 'valorises' male desire for power and domination and serves hierarchical and male socio-political interests. Indirection arises in the second place because political considerations are made the dominant ones in determining the rights and wrongs of philosophical and theological postulation. The first facet of the feminist critique makes it curiously indirect because it is not altogether clear how the sorry motives of those who hold a belief could show with any force that it was false or even unjustifiable. Of course, if their motives were other than rational (in being self-serving, selfdeceiving or what have you) this would tell us that they did not hold the belief out of a desire to respect the truth and the claims of good evidence. But for a motive-based account to debunk the belief's standing as a candidate for truth or reasonableness, it would have to have the force of showing that the alleged unworthy, delusive motives were necessary conditions for coming to the belief, so that no one could believe that there was an omnipotent God unless he or she was moved by the desire to 'valorise' male power and so forth. It would not be enough to show that these motives were sufficient to explain the prevalence of the belief. Human nature being what it is, people can be moved by all sorts of non-rational factors to believe what is, or may well be, true. In fact, traditionalist theologians and philosophers avow what they take to be reasons for believing omnipotence to be an attribute of the divine and it is surely odd that feminists think their critique can stick without concentrating on these reasons. It may be objected that should we find a sufficient explanation of the prevalence of a belief in terms of the self-serving motives of those who hold it, this would be a very good inductive indication that it is not to be taken seriously. Conceding this point, it is still worth insisting that such a discovery would not prove the conclusion that the belief in question was nothing other than a vehicle for expressing this or that desire. Religion is, in particular, an area in which insight and self-serving delusion are curiously and wonderfully mixed. So we should expect to find folk often coming to true conclusions for very bad reasons and reaching false conclusions from the very best of motives. There is then more obligation to examine carefully the merits and grounds of claimed insights independently of the motives which may or may not lie behind them. There are two ways in which feminists could support their concentration on the motivational background of belief in divine omnipotence. They could contend that the belief in an omnipotent God was so obviously absurd as to demand explanation in terms of motives not reasons - so absurd that no one of otherwise sound mind could come to this belief unless he or she were moved by non-rational factors. Feuerbach, who is an obvious source

147 for the projectionist critique employed by feminism, argues thus with regard to the 'theological' interpretation of Christianity: it is a mass of contradictions, entailing the need to treat it as an ungrounded projection. 2 Whether anything like this is on offer from feminists on omnipotence is open to question. Of course, feminists might take the view that the omnipotent God cannot but be a masculinist projection in all thinkers, extant and future, who believe in him because all religious thinking is a projection of political sentiment. We merely have to choose between good and bad sentiments and projections. This last line of reflection leads us on to the second way in which the feminist critique of omnipotence is indirect. It is largely fuelled by a desire to create an account of the divine that will serve a favoured political-cummoral vision. This vision is egalitarian, revolutionary, anti-capitalist, and committed to ending all the ways in which society has traditionally allotted different roles to the sexes. A dominant line in critique of divine omnipotence is that it is a belief which has served to bolster the old non-egalitarian, sexist order and to prevent the emergence of the new reign of justice. The metaphysical or other lines of argument philosophers have offered for including omnipotence in the definition of 'God' are implicitly rejected as irrelevant given the dominance of political considerations over correct thought in this area. One offshoot of this is that the critique does not see the need to pay attention to the details within the traditional philosophical-theological debate about the precise characterisation of divine omnipotence in itself and in relation to other divine attributes. (I shall show below that this is a real weakness in the feminist case.) Nor does it need to pay heed to such grounds as are offered for believing God to be omnipotent. Feminists often give the impression that there is nothing to do in the area of reflection about the divine other than to determine the appropriate political and social desiderata that should govern our thinking and then choose the model of the divine that best matches these. Taken to extreme this leads Mary Daly to argue that even a metaphysics of divinity such as Whitehead's which abandons the omnipotent, transcendent 'male' God is still to be rejected if it does not actively encourage '... human struggle against oppression in its concrete manifestations'. 3 In all of the feminist critique shows itself to be an obvious version of liberation theology, whereby orthodoxy becomes orthopraxis. Right praxis consists in working against what is held by feminists to be oppression and for what they regard as justice. There appear to be no questions of truth, in particular no questions of religious truth, outside of this. The feminist attack on the 'male' God of omnipotence is, like other manifestations of liberation theology, indebted to the Marxist concept of critique. There is no object of theoretical reflection - the concept of God - to engage our philosophical

148 attention, only an inextricably fused practical-theoretical task of adjusting our conceptual structure to the work and experience of liberation. 4 Philosophers may have thought there was a theoretical enterprise of defining and justifying belief in divine omnipotence, but all along they were constructing a concept to legitimate an oppressive social practice. As Davis notes, the paradigmatic source of this notion of critique is the second of Marx's Theses on F e u e r b a c h which denies that truth can be attributed to human thinking in a theoretical fashion. The truth or otherwise of human thought is to be proved in the practical use of that thought. 5 This is not the place to debate the coherence or adequacy of this stance toward matters of truth. Suffice is to note that it does provide a major barrier to any possible dialogue between feminist and traditional philosophy of religion. Analytically minded philosophers will see it as begging important questions (about the dominance of politics over other areas of thought, about the possibility of seeing the political as unimportant in the light of other concerns), and as producing wildly counter-intuitive consequences. They will want to explore the possible basis such an idea of truth might have in metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, the particular political vision fuelling feminism - egalitarian, revolutionary and socialist - is not universally shared among philosophers, including many women philosophers, and seems eminently debatable. Some might conclude that if we have to agree on some such vision before settling down to do the philosophy of religion, we should give up now.

The concept of God is traditional philosophy and theology is a fusion of at least two main elements: on the one hand, there are metaphysical notions stemming from the idea of God as ultimate reality, as ground of being; on the other, there are anthropomorphic notions stemming from the attempt to give expression to scriptural belief in God as creator, lord and saviour. These two elements lead to two poles in the description of God: metaphysical characterisations such as aseity and personalist characterisations in terms of such concepts as knowledge and action. These poles are reconciled by way of ascribing personal perfections to God which are modified in the light of the more negative metaphysical attributes. Hence, we have the 'omni' attributes. Such fusion is justified in so far as we can accept that the most satisfying way of giving an account of ultimate reality is through notions which connect it with the idea of rational will. Being is grounded in a purposive reality that is akin to the personal in some way. So something like the perfections of personhood (however remote) must be possessed by this ultimate reality. From the other direction, it is thought that the best way

149 to give discursive expression to the scriptural imagery for God is to interpret it in the light of the philosophical idea of the ground of being. Both routes, separately and in combination, can lead to the idea that God is omnipotent. God as ground of being is that which is source of all things (including their powers) and that on which all things continually depend. Fullness of power can be seen to be implied by this. God as loving lord exercises a wise providence over all things; omnipotence is required for this providence to be perfect (in the end, undefeatable). If God has all the perfections of personhood, he must have power in perfection. This last conclusion can be reached as follows. Agency is one of the defining features of the personal. In particular, a person is one who acts via the ability to translate intentions into outward deed. A person who had no ability to translate intention into act would hardly be said to have intentions, be an agent or exist as a personal reality. If God is the perfection of personhood, he has the perfect ability to translate intention into act, or: there is nothing that could prevent God doing what he purposes. In this respect his power is complete. Whatever is thought about these arguments, it should be clear that the two sources of the notion of God produce an account of a being who has personal attributes bearing only an attenuated resemblance to these attributes when they are exemplified in human beings. So, whatever power in God is like, it will be different in key respects from power in human beings and many forms of power that humans have, God cannot have. This is not least because power in God is realised along with a range of other perfections no human person can wholly exemplify. Indeed, the doctrine of simplicity teaches that whatever power in God is, it is one with his goodness, mercy, love, life, knowledge, etc. This entails that there can be no easy comparisons between divine and human power. Hence, one aspect of the feminist critique becomes immediately problematic, namely the argument that omnipotence in God would be a bad model for human conduct or our social relationships. The anti-anthropomorphic strain in the philosophical concept of God should prevent anyone with comprehension of that concept making easy extrapolations from what is praiseworthy in the divine case to what is praiseworthy in the human. It is equally out of order to extrapolate without care from what is worthy of condemnation in the human case to what is unacceptable in the divine. Some feminists do not seem to realise this, as when Carter Heywood describes the traditional omnipotent God as follows: This cold deity is the legitimating construct of the patriarchal desire to dominate and control the world. He is the eternal King, the Chairman of the board, the President of the institution, the Guru of the youth, the General of the army, the Judge of the court, the Master of the universe, the Father of the church. 6

150 The rhetorical force in this quotation arising from the titles of men occupying and enjoying positions of power evaporates once one realises that the omnipotent ultimate reality of traditional philosophical theism could not be a model for such power hungry folk, nor they for him. Phrases such as 'the President of the institution', 'the Chairman of the board' conjure up images of people who live to control others, whose sense of self-worth depends on seeing others subservient to them. They cannot live without exercising power over others. They need to have most things around them going according to their plans, otherwise their self-esteem is threatened. Such traits display moral weakness in two senses. First one who is so disposed is hindered from displaying many other praiseworthy qualities and enjoying many forms of enriching human relationships. Second such power is in fact weakness when viewed from another angle. For this type of person has a character which makes him or her radically dependent on others, in a manner which suggests emotional immaturity and lack of inner sources of self-respect. Without people to boss, without others to shake at his or her word or to look frightened at his or her frowns, such a person will judge him or herself to be a failure. Such power is indeed a form of powerlessness. All too often the powerful people that run this world are driven by and exemplify this kind of power. But the divine power cannot be at all similar to it. Whatever the divine power is, it must cohere with (or, be one and the same thing as) the divine mercy, justice, and love. The bad, degenerate dependence on others such power hides cannot characterise a perfect being. It is the merest superficial caricature to display an omnipotent God in such terms. If men have been moved to hold the doctrine of omnipotence out of a sub-conscious desire to project this kind of power, then they are doubly confused. Their double confusion tells us nothing about the notion of an omnipotent God p e r se, but remains just a fact about them. The fact that such degenerate power is in fact radical, disabling weakness shows the true power of one such as Jesus who is portrayed as refusing to seek degenerate power and as suffering its results without resistance. The power of the corrupt of this world is revealed as true impotence just in showing that it need not get its normal response of fear and obedience and in showing that there are sources of true valuation independent of the rewards and favours it doles out. Reflection on the true nature of such power and the true nature of the power of Christ (and others) in meeting it as he does also shows us something radically wrong about a further aspect of feminist reflection on the nature of power. It is characteristic of feminist theologians to allege that the old, 'masculinist' theology presents us with two stark alternatives, both unsatisfactory: the power of those who seek (and need) domination and the self-renunciation of the meek and humble (displayed paradigmatically in the passion of Christ). 7 What 'we' (the oppressed) need is rather genuine power but we need an equalisation of this

151 precious commodity and a mutual supporting of one another in its use and enjoyment. The missing possibility in this analysis is the one gestured to already: seeing humility as a form of true power in the light of which other forms of power are false coin. To explore this idea further, if I could do it, would lead us I believe to reflections telling against the dominance of political categories in judging of the worth of visions of life. s 3 When we speak about the power displayed by the President of the institution, or the Chairman of the board we refer to forms of domineering behaviour. We have in mind power exercised in a certain fashion. It should be a moot point in discussions of the adequacy of conceptions of omnipotence whether the power attributed to God thereby carries with it a particular conception of its exercise. The feminist critique of omnipotence associates that attribute with domineering behaviour and attitudes. What is in question is the image of God as '... a great patriarch in heaven, rewarding and punishing according to his mysterious and seemingly arbitrary will' .9 The omnipotent God inevitably reinforces male desires for dominance and mastery over others, most blatantly shown in male dominance over women. But need the God of traditional theology and philosophy be thought of as exercising power in ways which can be said to be domineering? A standard way of defining 'omnipotence' in that tradition has been in terms of the ability to bring about any logically possible states of affairs. Now such definitions are also known to be too simple. Modifications are offered in the direction of making omnipotence limited by what is compatible with the other essential attributes of the divine nature. Some go further, arguing that, even with modifications, definitions of omnipotence in terms of the ability to bring about states of affairs lapse either into incoherence or triviality. They would prefer a definition in terms of 'having all powers which it is logically possible for a being with God's nature to have'. H~What is significant about such discussions for our purposes is the acknowledgement of a distinction between power and its exercise. The God who can do all things or possess all powers does not inevitably do all things or exercise all those powers. Our image of a human being who is domineering is the image of someone who chooses to exercise power in a certain way, namely so as to subjugate and control others. This agent has characteristic intentions and plans. But to say that God is omnipotent is not yet to say anything about his characteristic intentions or how he will exercise his power. So this God is not yet a model for the domineering male. Personalist theologies of the twentieth century have wanted to assert the full compatibility of omnipotence in God and libertarian freedom in human beings by relying on this distinction between power and its exercise. God

152 could act so as to control the lives of creatures who are now free, but does not choose so to exercise his powers. Since this limitation is self-imposed, it does not detract from his possession of power. 11 The distinction between power and its exercise and the idea of divine self-limitation throws up a response to the feminist critique based on the simple point that there is more than one thing denoted by 'power'. Thus, it may not be true that omnipotence is bankrupt because it is an inevitable valorisation of the male desire for power, since the power possessed by God is not the same power males lust for and drool over. This should make us pause about the rhetoric which surrounds the feminist critique. Sharon Welch introduces her critique of omnipotence under the heading 'The Erotics of Domination'. ~2 If, however, the power which is morally and socially corrupting is the power which is domination over others, it has yet to be shown that omnipotence in deity equals the exercise of domination over other personal agents. On many a liberal, personalist theology, it does not; its exercise is withheld precisely to allow freedom and autonomy to flourish in creation. The God of the feminist portrayal is a God who has certain intentions (to control and master others), whereas the mere attribution of omnipotence does not as yet say anything about divine intentions or how divine power will be exercised. Further support for this point can be gained by noting the consequences of the belief deep within the tradition that divine power is modified by God's other essential attributes. This entails that God does not merely n o t do wrong, but that he cannot. 13 Two points of importance follow from this. First it reinforces our sense of the magnitude of the difference between human and divine agency, thus making it problematic to take one as the straightforward model for the other. Second it should provide further reason for divorcing the idea of an omnipotent deity from any connection with domineering masculinity or despotism. Domineering behaviour being bad, it is simply not within the power of God to evince it. Welch concedes the point that the tradition connects omnipotence with perfect goodness, and sees the latter as determining the nature of the former. Yet, in her view, this will not let the tradition off the hook: The idea of an omnipotent and sovereign God, however, assumes that absolute power can be a good. In the Christian tradition, one does not attribute demonic or destructive traits to Deity. And yet absolute power is a destructive trait. It assumes that the ability to act regardless of the response of others is a good rather than a sign of alienation from others. 14 The rhetoric implicit in this passage is crowned by an accompanying quotation from Whitehead in which the sense of 'absolute power' used of the God of traditional theism is fixed by its use when describing the conduct, aims and attitudes of the imperial rulers of ancient Egypt, Persia and Rome.

153 As argument this will not wash since it abounds in equivocation. If 'absolute power' used of God is just another synonym for 'omnipotence', it does not mean the same when used of the worst of ancient rulers. In them it describes a project of mastery and conquest over all, in which there are no checks to the personal and dynastic ambitions of one man. But are the intentions of God toward his creation ways of expressing a desire to achieve absolute power of this sort? Aquinas, quoting the pseudo-Dionysius, gives the following minimal definition of 'God': 'The Deity is what watches over all things in perfect providence and goodness'. ~5 We may justly wonder if the providential care of free personal agents in God's creation would permit God to exercise 'the ability to act regardless of the response of others', and, divine power being perhaps modified by divine goodness, whether God could have the ability to exercise this kind of absolute power. My suggestion in the light of the above is that feminists need to attend more closely to the idea that there are different notions of power before beginning a critique of omnipotence. (Below I shall argue that they fail to make crucial distinctions in the delineation of the character of political power.) 4

It must be admitted that the arguments of the last section are altogether too simple as a reply to critiques of omnipotence. They ignore the point that many a traditional conception of omnipotence in philosophy and theology allows no distinction between divine power and its exercise. These conceptions unite in viewing God as an all-determining creator and in seeing his all-determining character as following from his omnipotence. In this respect, the self-limiting God of twentieth century personalist theism occupies a minority tradition. There are good reasons why the idea of an all-determining God should have dominated theological reflection. A central plank in the classical idea of God is that God is a necessary being beyond becoming and change. He is pure act. In him there is no distinction between potentiality and action. He can have no potentialities which are yet to be realised. With such a conception it becomes difficult to distinguish between divine power and its exercise. The completeness of the divine power is the completeness of the divine act. We might add to this the thought that God is that on whom all things depend absolutely. God continually sustains the creation from absolute nothingness from moment to moment. God must eternally exercise a complete, sustaining power over all things. I have summed up the moves which block a distinction between completeness of divine power and completeness of divine action in a crude

154 fashion. The summary points to the support there might be for Griffin's conclusion that the major theologians of the Christian tradition have all taught a God who determines all things, a God whose providence is exercised through ensuring that he wills and ordains all events/6 Griffin, of course, whishes to replace this conception with a Process one in which God is left without omnipotence but merely with the always limited power to evoke or persuade other agents, animate and inanimate, to act one way rather than another. It is of the essence of Griffin's Process critique of omnipotence to leave the theistic philosopher with a limited range of uncomfortable choices. He wishes to deprive the theist of a further choice beyond the all-determining God and its Process alternative. Personalist conceptions of deity which rule out all-encompassing divine determination are to be set aside, principally because they offer an inadequate solution to the problem of evil. Argument on this front could be reinforced by reflection on the problem of how the idea of a self-limiting God who withdraws the exercise of some of his power from the world avoids being deistic not theistic. Theism must maintain a doctrine of continual or eternal divine creation and corresponding unceasing creaturely dependence. But a God who withdraws power from the world to allow some parts of it to be the scene of libertarian freedom seems to leave those parts free of his continual sustaining; they achieve independence from him. Thus, theism has to be of the all-determining kind/7 To rebut this last criticism, personalists would have to maintain the coherence of a distinction between God's sustaining activity as, on the one hand, a necessary condition of the existence, powers and activity of all things at all times and, on the other, as a sufficient condition of the existence, powers and activity of those things. God sustains all things at all times in the bringing about of their effects but he does not bring about those effects given that the universe contains real things with real powers. Setting aside these debates, we can see that the Process critique must also narrow the options for all-determining theism by dint of showing that if God determines all, nothing else apart from God possesses power; in particular, human beings possess no free will worth the name. God then becomes the author of human sin. The theological determinist's defence against this charge, and thus a main target of the likes of Griffin, is a compatibilist view of determinism and freedom. Griffin's vigorous attack on compatibilism in this context can be usefully compared with Helm's equally vigorous defence of it.~8 Process thought tries to push theism to the extreme of all-determining theism and make out that position to be flatly incompatible with basic beliefs ('Human beings have free-will', 'Other things than God have power', 'God is not the author of sin') which the theist must maintain. For what it is

155 worth (not much) I side with the Process critique, but it must be said that the debate has all the hallmarks of an inconclusive philosophical encounter. As in many other instances of philosophical critique, it is clear what is being alleged against the philosophical position under attack: it entails manifest falsehoods. But the arguments to show that it does have those entailments are disputable and disputed, so we end up with at best a suasion rather than proof. Will the Process critique of omnipotence serve the turn of feminism (which, we noted above, Welch seems to think)? If that critique were successful in showing the idea of omnipotence to be obviously bankrupt, we might then consider whether its longevity and popularity could only be accounted for by speculating as to the motives, in masculinist projections, which might explain these facts. But I don't think the Process critique shows traditional theism to be obviously bankrupt. Accounting for its longevity and popularity may require no excursus into the motives of theists. Such positive grounds and reasons as tell in its favour might do the job better. Moreover, we have to ask again a version of a question aired above: Does the portrayal of God as all-determining, pure act serve as a good way of reinforcing and enthroning a masculinist pursuit of domination over the weak and powerless? Consider a typical male pursuing the project of domination. Byrne seeks to run, and largely succeeds in running, the department exactly as he likes. Staff and students fear his frowns and jump at his every word. He makes a point of seeing that nothing is done unless on the visible ground that it furthers his vision of how a department of religion ought to be organised. It should be clear that the all-determining God on Griffin's critical portrayal is no model for Byrne and his ways. For all that Byrne succeeds in pursuit of his goal of academic domination, he ends up bearing no closer resemblance to the eternal God who is pure act and on which all things depend than his female colleagues, who like typical women lack any desire for domination or self-assertion at the expense of others and are socialised to play the role of natural victims. The motivational set Byrne requires to behave as he does makes him further removed from the likeness of God than otherwise. All things do not depend on God in the way all things in the department depend on Byrne. Byrne, on Griffin's account of the consequences of traditional theism, is in fact possessed of no genuine power at all and remains, like all of us, in a state of absolute creaturely dependence on the only being with any power whatsoever. According to the Process view, belief in the traditional omnipotent God faces a raft of insoluble intellectual problems. I suggest that amongst those problems is not the further one that it is the natural expression of the male lust for domination. What is odd about the traditional God, if Griffin is

156 right, is not that he is male, but that he is the author of sin and the producer of a world in which there is no free will and, indeed, in which created things are no better than Berkeleyian ideas in God's mind. ~9 Domineering males like Byrne cannot bear others to exercise their autonomy and freedom. They will not acknowledge others' autonomy. They defend that refusal by manipulating others. God in the eyes of the critique examined in this section does not evince a similar refusal. He does not manipulate things and people. Things and people have no reality and character at all other than as manifestations of his will. If he withdrew that will from them, they would not stand over against him as sources of power and autonomy, the recognition of which would threaten God's self-image. They would simply not exist. The existence of created things obeying God's will would not serve to confirm God's sense of power. Recall a point made above: the power-hungry, domineering male needs other people who are independent of him in one way. His control of them, their fear of him, confirms him in his power. But the God Process thought finds in traditional theism has no things existing independently of him.

One of the major planks in the case for saying that the traditional God is a mere valorisation of the male desire for power remains to be considered. This plank turns around the relation between religion and politics. Essential to it is the use and misuse of the notion of hierarchy. According to feminists, male action and thought, especially with regard to women, has turned around notions of hierarchy and domination. 2° The God of omnipotence has justified hierarchical, domineering modes of thought and action. In some writers, this ideology of power and domination is linked specifically to the use of monarchical models in association with the notion of an omnipotent deity. 21 It is the 'King-servant' view of divine human relations that must go. God as supreme being promotes the keeping of human beings in infantile subjection and serves as 'a not too subtle mask' for the perpetuation of patriarchy. 22 Welch tries to cement this link between the omnipotent God and the ideology of patriarchy by claiming that belief in the absolute power of God reinforces the human desire for absolute power to be found in the male political system. 23 She cites theologians, such as Barth and Tillich, who appear to have made a theological virtue out of obedience to absolute power. The theological defence, indeed idolising, of submission to total, absolute power encourages the 'erotics of domination' and legitimises the exercise by humans in ruling groups of total power over others. Submission to the greatest power in society is glorified. 'The claim of complete obedience to a higher power justifies total control of -

157 o t h e r s ' . 24 Augustine is a crucial villain in this piece, in effect producing a theologically-backed politics which licenses submission to the tyrannical exercise of human power over others. Of his influence, we are authoritatively told: 'Augustine's understanding of human bondage [to absolute power], while denounced as heretical by many of his contemporaries, became definitive of Christian orthodoxy'.25 As we shall see below, this last statement from Welch is simply false. In the meantime, let us note the flow of feminist rhetoric on God and power in politics. A number of notions are joined together in a list whose overtones are entirely bad: God as divine ruler, hierarchy, dominance, submission to absolute power, infantile subjection, obedience, and so on. Contrasted with this list of bad notions is the central claim that the future of a just society involves the end of hierarchical modes of political and social organisation and the reign of equality. The key tenet in this creed is 'An equalisation of power is the prerequisite for the creation of a co-humanity'.26 The demands of this tenet will be fulfilled by that favourite device in feminist political thought: mechanisms for mutual empowerment. It would be wrong for this study to get involved in the first-order political question of whether egalitarianism is an appropriate governing political aim for late twentieth century politics. That is properly a matter for debate within political dogmatics. What can be shown is that feminist understandings of political theory and the history of political thought as revealed in its critique of the role of God in such theory are woeful. Given that, we can demonstrate the traditional notion of God does not have to function, and has not always functioned, as the legitimation of servile obedience to unfettered power. Let us first note that it is characteristic of the greater part of Western political thought to have built itself around a distinction, though not an opposition, between power and authority. Authority is legitimate power and the majority of thinkers, including theological ones, in the tradition have agreed that legitimacy in the exercise of power rests upon the moral basis of power. The obedience of a political subject is not like that of a slave to his or her master. In the latter relationship, obedience arises out of ownership and is exercised through physical control and its effects, chiefly fear. But in the former case, obedience is freely given because power is seen as legitimate and thereby as being worthy of obedience. It has been rightly claimed to be one of the chief distinguishing marks of Western political societies that they have separated the legitimation and exercise of political sovereignty from that of ownership of goods or people. Anyone who studies the political systems of non-western societies quickly discovers that there the lines separating ownership from sovereignty either do not exist, or are so vague as to be meaningless, and that

158 the absence of this distinction marks a cardinal point of difference between western and non-western types of governments... Under primitive conditions, authority over people and over objects is combined, and it required an extraordinarily complex evolution of law and institutions which began in ancient Rome for it to be split into authority exercised as sovereignty and authority exercised as ownership. 27 Once, starting in the Greco-Roman political tradition, a patrimonial conception of the state (the state as the ruler's property) was abandoned, the way was open to conceive of the subject's duty of obedience to the state in quite other terms than slavish subjection. The ruler's right to rule became not an exercise in ownership but a moral right, limited in turn by moral considerations. It is true that some things in the Christian tradition suggest a reduction of authority-obedience to power-subjection. Augustine in The City of God (Book 19 Chapter 16) affirms that human freedom was lost through the consequences of sin and he seems to equate the state of the political subject with that of the slave. Similarly reductive accounts of political power can perhaps be found in Luther and there is of course the influence of Romans 1 3 : 1 - 7 to be taken into account. Romans reads like the perfect illustration for feminist purposes of blind subjection to human power based upon belief in divinely appointed hierarchy: 'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God'. Yet it has been persuasively argued by D'Entreves that the majority theological interpretation of Romans 13 has been anti-Augustinian. 28 This interpretation has based itself on verses 3 and 4, where we are told by Paul that rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but only to bad and that a ruler is 'God's servant for your good'. The tradition has gone on to distinguish the office of ruler from actual rulers. The office is instituted as an agency for justice in the world. The office is providential. Particular rulers are to be obeyed in so far as they meet the demands of the office. A right to resist the unjust, tyrannical ruler has been taught. A very strong tradition in theology has allied itself with the non-patrimonial conception of political sovereignty; indeed it can be argued that the theological tradition has played a crucial role in shaping that non-patrimonial conception and passing it onto secular, modern thought. We need look no further than Aquinas' questions on law (Summa Theologiae la2ae 90-97) to see the misleading character of Welch's attempt to tar the entire tradition of political theology with Augustine's brush. Aquinas here teaches the moral basis of respectworthy political rule; a right of resistance against tyrants; the ability of human beings as double-sharers in the natural law to judge and question what power does; the failure of unjust law to be law at all; the basis of just law in reason and in its promoting the

159 common good - a mutual enjoyment of the good by all citizens. And of course, Aquinas, as his frequent references show, was doing no more than articulate and expand upon a tradition which had begun earlier with writers like Gratian. What is crucial in Aquinas is that he has no difficulty in meshing his concept of God with his morally-based account of political rule. This is because, in common with many earlier and later writers, he sees the divinely guaranteed hierarchy in the world as one of law, and not one of naked power alone. The same definition of law serves for divinely generated eternal and natural law as for the human law which should follow them, namely '... an ordinance of reason for the common good made by the authority who has care of the community and promulgated'. 29 There is surely belief in hierarchy here and it is a hierarchy of power, but it is power seen as authority, so that those subject to the demands of this hierarchy are not its slaves. They do not participate in it because they are owned by those above them, but because they share in the God-derived ability to make, understand, question and act upon law themselves. So, naturally, they are placed within a system which allows them the ability and right to question those who claim authority but wield only power, who promulgate what passes for law but what in reality is only the whim of a tyrant not seeking the common good. Omnipotence in God does not disturb this system, for, as noted above, whatever is omnipotence in God coheres with, or is one and the same thing as, justice and goodness in God. Huff contends that in the post-eleventh century flowering of political theology the discovery and influence of Platonism, and particularly the Timaeus, was crucial. 3° This was allied to the doctrine of the creator to give a picture of one who created according to eternal principles of reason and whose omnipotence was a guarantee of the omnipresence and sway of these principles. The fashioning of humankind in the image of this creator gave human creatures the ability to play a part in a hierarchy of reason and wisdom, so that knowledge of the demands of reason and wisdom was available for the structuring of society. Critics of the omnipotent deity may wonder how much of this is really coherent. If theological voluntarists are right, the true marriage of Christianity and Platonism is impossible. If Griffin and others are correct, God must be all-determining and, failing the truth of compatibilism, there is no room in God's universe for the freedom of mind and conscience required to allow human beings to play the role of conscientious partners in a hierarchy of reason and authority. If God is all-determining, many, including feminists, will say that the problem of evil makes him incredible and the idea of a natural, moral law in creation preposterous. But such criticisms are in a sense beside the point. The question is as to the character of the theological tradition. Aquinas, Gratian, Abelard and other major theological sources of

160 the idea of morally-based source of political authority did not think thus. (No doubt in Aquinas's case this is because he held to some form of compatibilism.) Therefore their conceptions of hierarchy in the creation and in society, of the human being as political subject, and of the nature of respectworthy power were not those pilloried by feminists. They did not valorise absolute power in placing God at the source of authority and they helped foster and transmit a tradition which has not worshipped total, absolute power. It has taught respect for authority as legitimate power and the necessity for hierarchy as the appropriate background to legitimacy. The contention that there should not be an equalisation of power in the human community is linked to arguments for the necessity of the state. For if we need the state, we need a final, supreme source of sovereignty and a final arbiter of when power is rightfully exercised by one person over another. It is not clear to me whether the decrying of hierarchy, the demands for equalisation of power and the polemic against subjection and absolute power in feminism are intended to serve some anarchist view of society or not. Anarchists wish to have a society run entirely on the voluntary principle and over which there is no controlling centre of power and direction. It is a legitimate matter for debate in political theory whether the existence of the state is justified permanently, or even temporarily. All we need to note is that such arguments as can be offered for the necessity of the state do not entail the conceptions of hierarchy and power feminists attack. Two chief justifications for the state are: first the need in a complex human society to achieve some harmony in human pursuits so that crucial social goods are realised (such as providing the wherewithal to protect against poverty and disease); second the need forcefully and efficiently to restrain that minority who will act unjustly and criminally against the interests and persons of others. Such justifications do not entail that any human beings should exercise absolute, that is total, power over others. They can allow many facets of the human good to be left to individuals and to voluntary association. They do maintain the necessity for overall rule and direction and for the possession of final power by the state. This is the power which guarantees that no one can break the law with impunity. The guarantee of the rule of law is not the same as the total subjection of human subjects. Indeed, it enhances individual freedom. Where law rules no one need fear any force save that exercised in the name of such impersonal law as is necessary to ensure the smooth running of society. Where just law rules, freedom is increased. It is a feature of the hierarchy established in many Western societies in consequence of developments in Christendom and theology from the eleventh century onwards that it has allowed for the development of autonomous institutions in society. These are institutions recognised by law, capable of having legal personality and finally subject to the law's jurisdic-

161 tion, but yet promulgating in autonomous fashion their own internally generated rules and aims. The medieval universities are prime examples. Research shows that Western societies have uniquely developed hierarchies, not of slavish subjects to absolute power, but of separate jurisdictions within the overall jurisdiction of a sovereign state. Thus has been born and grown into maturity the idea of the limited state which fosters smaller jurisdictions within its midst for the pursuit of specific interests by citizens. The states emerging out of Christendom have recognised the fight of citizens to organise themselves into sub-societies (such as universities, clubs, professions, charities and the like) which have their own goals and regulations. The state has given recognition to these and thus helped to foster their own self-definition and their permanence. It claims final sovereignty over them but precisely not total control. Their existence does not thus threaten the rule of law. With the check of final endorsement by the state, we know that a sub-society devoted to, say, the kidnap and murder of children, could get no legal recognition, only legal persecution. Two points need stressing from this rather obvious tale. The existence of totalitarian states in the Western world and of philosophies supporting them is an aberration. The predominant tradition has not been for the state to absorb and control society altogether. It has been to encourage the idea of the state as a legal system which finally controls society but allows autonomous jurisdictions, independent legal entities and free action within it. So we really need to take with a large pinch of salt the feminist caricature of past, patriarchal society as one which worshipped absolute power and the feminist equation of hierarchy, domination, conquest and power. Moreover, we need to recognise the vital role that theology (and related things like the development of canon law) has played in the development of the notion of the state as a hierarchy of jurisdictions. This role is shown in detail by Huff. 3~ He demonstrates the way in which the inherited Roman idea of the state as a legal system (rather than the ruler's property) was integrated into a Christian world view in which God's wisdom, and human participation in it through reason and conscience, was crucial. Now a feminist might object to all of this as follows: all this grand theologico-legal theory is fine, but its alleged prevalence has been quite compatible with actual societies in which male power has ruled female weakness. The morally-based conception of states' authority has served to mask exploitation and domination. Granting the point that women have been unjustly treated in this manner, what does the complaint show in this context? It still seems to be true that the idea of hierarchy feminists attack is not the idea of hierarchy the notion of the sovereign God has been used to defend. So at the level of ideas, the notion of God in the politically important theological tradition remains innocent of the associations feminists

162 deplore. But still, they may say, it is worse that the ideology anchored in the sovereign God is so innocent, yet the actual structure of power it is has masked is so evil. Its innocence makes it more efficient as a mask. Men have in fact sought absolute power while masking that search behind images of a legal order with true authority. So absolute power has been legitimised after all. In reply, one must stress the distorting character of these reflections. The fact that some have used the notion of a true source of final authority in the universe to justify what are in fact illegitimate uses of power does not by itself show that this notion is misguided. Unless and until feminists can show that the notion of God as sovereign authority licenses, by its own internal logic, such excuses for the exercise of evil power, the misuses of the notion remain just that: misuses. Contra feminism, it is by reference to the internal logic of the notion of God that one can see them as misuses of it. The actual societies arising out of Christendom and influenced by its notions of legitimacy and authority contain all manner of injustices. We could see the claim that these societies are legal systems with real authority as therefore deeply compromised. Yet the claim that they have authority should, and frequently has, cut two ways. On the one hand, it encourages acceptance of the actual use of power. On the other hand, it encourages reflection on the legitimacy and thus true authority behind that power. Crucial here surely is the fact that the tradition has used the notion of God, of the justice he embodies, as both a legitimating, conservative principle and a critical, reforming principle. As a conservative principle, it has frequently cloaked actual injustice in the mantle of what God wills. Yet, the tradition has also openly acknowledged that human rule can be, often is, unjust, tyrannical, so it has requested that such rule reform itself. It has taught (whether consistently or not does not matter) that human beings possess a conscience which has content independent of the actual laws and customs of the land. And it has taught, most importantly, that obedience to conscience is binding. No act which is against even a mistaken conscience is good, says Aquinas. To act against even a mistaken conscience is to act against God's law. 32 Conscience has authority over power exercised contrary to the moral law. It is an inevitable fact about human beings that they will tend to link systems of power in their societies with their religious ontology, their myths. Power seeks the cloak of authority and authority cannot be seen in that which is out of harmony with what a people defines for itself as finally true, good and real. Thus much actual injustice has been justified on religious grounds. But this has been a two way process. Human beings have sometimes compared what passes for legitimate power with their conceptions of what is finally true, good and real, and found that power wanting.

163 What the feminist critique must make us believe is that there is an inevitable, or at least very powerful, impulse in the idea of sovereign deity which serves to make us accept as right and unquestionable any established claims to power in the world. If this feminist thought is true, it is because the omnipotent God serves to justify absolute power itself. However, the notion has not worked in so simple a fashion. It has in fact worked predominantly in the tradition to justify the notion of human power as appropriate only when part and parcel of a hierarchy of law, of jurisdictions, in which power is limited and checked by autonomous institutions and free, consciencewielding human subjects. May be feminists will stress the doctrine of providence as something that has served to justify the powerful in whatever use they make of their power. This is to suppose that the predominant message of Christian theology has been Pope's 'Whatever is, is right'. But this way of viewing the tradition is hardly plausible. Whatever its critics think it ought to have taught about evil and good in the world, it has in fact always taught that there is a gap, to say the least, between how things actually go and how God ideally wants them to go. This is after all a fallen world. And its falleness shows especially in human society and action. The human world is sinful world and it does not represent in its present and historical state the perfect justice that will mysteriously replace it in end-time and in which God will truly reign. 6

This paper acknowledges the fact that there are major criticisms to be made of the doctrine of an omnipotent God. Within the analytic tradition the possibility of giving omnipotence clear and coherent definition is debated. Process thought has developed arguments suggesting that omnipotence in deity spells the denial of creaturely power and human free will. Linked critiques of God as creator suggest that omnipotence in God entails the insubstantiality of the world. Critiques of theodicy allege that omnipotence would leave God no excuse in allowing a world with evil in it. So, philosophy of religion outside feminism debates the coherence and plausibility of divine omnipotence. The question I have pursued is whether the feminist notion of omnipotence as a masculinist projection of the desire for dominance adds anything to such arguments for the rational indefensibility of belief in an omnipotent God. I have concluded that it does not. In the first place its critique is indirect. It is not clear why the alleged ideological use of the notion of omnipotent deity by some males should entail that the notion is itself indefensible. In the second place it seems that only rather gross anthropomorphic misreadings of the notions of God and of omnipotence would enable them to serve

164 the symbolic function which feminists so deplore. This reason supports the first: if the second reason is cogent, it is ground for saying that ideological uses the concept of omnipotence do not taint the concept, rather they show something about the stupidity of such folk as have had these ideological uses for it. In the third place I have contended that feminists on power appear to be ignorant of the complexities of that notion in the political sphere. They seem to lack the knowledge of political theory and theology's contribution to it which would enable them to address cogently notions of hierarchy, authority, power and obedience. None of what I have said denies that there have been political misuses of the doctrine of a sovereign, omnipotent creator. Some people have used this notion to present illegitimate exercises of power as legitimate. Others have used the notion to make themselves comfortable in the face of evils which can in fact be remedied. It has been a fact about human beings that we have sought justification for what is in what is divine. Sometimes this has lead us to be over-content with what is. Sometimes it has lead us to be critical of what is. I do not think that the many nuances of this disposition are illuminated by the thought that belief in an omnipotent creator just is a masculine valorisation of absolute power. The feminist critique has value. It can stimulate reflection. I do not think that this critique can guide deep reflections in this area very far. The critique is very impatient with detail. Nuances in different versions of belief in omnipotence are ignored. The political order is investigated without any sense that complexities await anyone who reflects on hierarchy, authority and related notions. A broad brush is applied and its use is sustained by the force of rhetoric. This may make us reflect on the importance of distinguishing the task of philosophy of religion from the task of propagating a political dogmatics. 33

Notes 1. M. Raphael, 'Feminism, constructivism and numinous experience', Religious Studies 30 (1994): 523. 2. See P. B. Clarke and P. Byrne, Religion defined and explained (London and Basingstokle: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 108-109. 3. M. Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. 20. 4. See C. Davis, Theology and political society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 3-4. 5. D. McLellan, Karl Marx: Selected writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 156. 6. The redemption of God: A theology of mutual relation (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), p. 156. Quoted in D. Hampson, Theology and feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 156.

165 7. D. Hampson, 'On power and gender', Modern Theology 4 (1988): 239ff. 8. For some tantalising hints about 'true' power see R. White, 'Notes on analogical predication and speaking about God', in B. Hebblethwaite and S. R. Sutherland (eds.), The philosophical frontiers of Christian theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 220ff. To her credit Reuther sees that there are issues about the precise nature of the power displayed by God in Christ at the heart of these debates: R. R. Reuther, Sexism and God-talk (London: SCM Press, 1992), p. 30. 9. Daly, p. 13. 10. A. Kenny, The God of the philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 98. 11. See J. R. Lucas, The future (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 232-233. 12. A feminist ethic of risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 111. 13. See R. Swinburne, The coherence of theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 159-161. 14. Welch p. 111. 15. Summa Theologiae la, 13, 8, trans. H. McCabe (London: Blackfriars]Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1964), Vol. 3, p. 81. 16. D. R. Griffin, Evil revisited (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 64-65. 17. See A. Olding, Modern biology and natural theology (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 148-150. 18. Griffin, pp. 71 if; E Helm, Eternal God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 146ff. 19. Compare E Byrne, 'Berkeley, scientific realism and creation', Religious Studies 20 (1984): 453-464. 20. Hampson (1990), p. 155. 21. Reuther, p. 30; S. McFague, Models of God (London: SCM Press, 1987), p. 16 and 64. 22. Daly, p. 18. 23. Welch, p. 111. 24. Welch, p. 112. 25. Welch, p. 113. 26. Hampson (1988), p. 240. 27. R. Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. xvii-xviii. 28. A. P. D'Entreves, The notion of the state (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 185ff. 29. la2ae, 90, 4, trans T. Gilby (London: Blackfriars/Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1966), Vol. 30, p. 17. 30. T. Huff, The rise of early modern science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 100ft. 31. See Chapters 3 and 4. 32. Summa Theologiae, la2ae, 19, 5. 33. The Bible is quoted in the Revised Standard Version. My thanks to Paul Helm for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Address for correspondence: Prof. Peter Byrne, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K. Phone: (171) 836 5454; Fax: (171) 873 2255