Tolkien Pop! Gets Wesleyan

A Critique of Thomas H. McCall's Response to Thomas Jay Oord

Hello Tolkien Poppers!

Today is a post that veers off the path of Tolkien and pop culture into the wilderness of the theological. However, pop culture tends to share a reciprocal relationship with theology as well as politics, which this post tries to address.

For those who are new or not as familiar with my work, most of my academic work is in theology—specifically Tolkien and theology as well as process and Wesleyan theology, which is theology in the tradition of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. I am and have been a member of the Wesleyan Theological Society (WTS) and presented my first academic paper at the 2020 Wesleyan Theological Society Meeting entitled “Punk and Wesleyan Theology” a couple weeks before the world shutdown in response to COVID-19. At some point, I’m going to write a comparative analysis between Wesley and Tolkien through their connection as English Christians who attended Oxford. Obviously, they are separated by centuries, occupation, and religious affiliation. But that’s a musing for down the road.

Like many institutions, the field of Wesleyan theology is experiencing an intellectual, religious, and political battle within its ranks. Does it lean more dogmatic? Conservative? Progressive? Open? These questions of identity and more are currently being asked. Like many issues surrounding important questions, dialogue transforms into fighting. One of the “shots fired” in this ongoing struggle was a review of

Thomas Jay Oord

’s book The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, the academic journal of the Wesleyan Theological Society by Thomas H. McCall. I too have reviewed Tom’s book here as I resonate with his theology. He has also become a friend and hero of mine.

I have written a critique of McCall’s dismal review to Tom’s book. The Wesleyan Theological Journal is not open access, so you’ll have to rely on your library—academic or public, depending on your location and services or you can check out the WTS website to see if you’re interested in joining the society or getting access to the journal: https://www.wtsociety.org/journal-options. In my estimation, McCall’s review is an all-too-common tale of our contemporary discourse: an emotionally charged attack with little attention to its opponent or logical argumentation. If we’re going to shape a better world, respectful dialogue needs to lead and calling out disrespectful discourse needs to ensue when it is expressed.

This critique is a calling out of McCall not taking Tom seriously on his own terms as a person and theologian and a call for future scholars and dialogue partners to do better in future work and conversations. This piece is a little more academic than usual, but I enjoyed writing it and there are cited quotes from McCall’s article to help readers understand his arguments and line of reasoning against Tom.

I always love hearing from y’all, but I especially enjoy hearing your thoughts when I do something different like this post, so let me know what you think!

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It is clear that there are multiple battles going on in the Wesleyan Theological Society and beyond. These battles primarily remain in the intellectual, denominational, and political realms. Theological competition is as old as the Church itself. Unfortunately, what also remains historically consistent between theological opponents is the eventual descent into personal attacks and unchecked emotional ranting. Thomas H. McCall’s “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil: A Response to Thomas Jay Oord”¹ is one of the most embarrassing examples of a personal hit piece within our theological camp. Rather than being a proper response to Thomas Jay Oord’s The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, it is clear that this is an attack on an imaginary bogeyman constructed by McCall to give his opinions the facade of actual arguments. It is my intention to survey McCall’s response to Oord and demonstrate why this is the case.

There is much wrong about McCall’s response in the peer-reviewed Wesleyan Theological Journal. Firstly, as an analytical theologian, one would expect McCall to begin with Oord’s basic premises from The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, lay out his arguments logically, address the arguments, and provide counter arguments. However, this methodology is completely absent from McCall’s response. Instead, McCall begins with building a strawman version of Oord through callous proof texting of his work, a string of ad hominems, and sarcastic insults. Additionally, if this a response to Oord’s theology of amipotence, why does McCall address Oord’s views on human sexuality, point out that he is the “head honcho of a small publishing company,”² and lives in Idaho? Rather than deal with Oord’s focus on the nature of God’s power, McCall begins by strangely jumping to Oord’s trinitarian work elsewhere and making Oord a crude analogue to the Trinity through describing Oord’s operating in three different roles determined by McCall. How this comparison between the Trinity and Oord makes sense is a mystery. Further, McCall’s aside holds no relevance to the whole of his argument against amipotence. This chaotic and personal introduction sets the tone for the rest of McCall’s response.

After McCall’s personal remarks, he gets to work focusing on one main aspect of Oord’s argument against the classical doctrine of omnipotence: the problem of evil. Quoting from a previous article published by Oord in the Wesleyan Theological Journal on John Wesley and Omnipotence where Oord focuses on the problem of evil, McCall raises the question “which problem of evil?”³ Here, one should raise another question: did McCall read the entirety of The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence? McCall goes on to point out the multiple problems of evil addressed by a variety of philosophers and theologians in an attempt to criticize Oord for not clarifying his terms and being thorough. “Perhaps Oord means to refer to the logical problem of evil.”⁴ This musing is just one of the many reasons why one should question whether McCall actually read Oord’s book because Oord addresses the logical problem of evil on the very first page of the chapter entitled “Evil Ends Omnipotence”!⁵ Additionally, Oord’s dedicated chapter on the problem of evil addresses many of the problems of evil that McCall asserts Oord does not address. Oddly, instead of dealing with Oord on his own terms and arguments, he musters up those put forth by other philosophers and theologians, purports these other terms and arguments, and then insults Oord once again by sarcastically calling Oord’s amipotent God “The OORD.”

In McCall’s third section of his response, he explains the Free Will Defense and again asks, “Perhaps this is the problem of evil that motivates Oord to replace GOD with The OORD.”⁶ Once again, the answer is “yes!” Along with every problem of evil that McCall specifically brings up in his response, Oord, ironically, addresses the Free Will Defense with logical analysis.⁷ These pages are not cited by McCall, but the pages belonging to the section of Oord’s book entitled “Why Doesn’t God Prevent Evil?”, which are a few pages before Oord’s treatment of the Free Will Defense, are. This contributes to the many proofs that McCall did not truly read Oord’s book in good faith, but quickly scanned it to write a personal attack in defense of orthodoxy. However, it is in this section that McCall finally attempts a logical treatment of the arguments in The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence. Keeping with the nature of the response, McCall, instead of dealing with Oord directly, takes a Catherine Keller quote from Oord’s book and revises the quote into a logical argument of McCall’s own making. He then takes this revisionist argument, criticizes it, and implicitly pats himself on the back for pointing out the “holes” in the theological arguments of Oord, or Keller–it is unclear who he is truly addressing here.

Moving from the brief “takedown” of McCall’s perception of Oord’s arguments regarding the Free Will Defense, he moves on to Oord’s utilization of Charles Hartshorne critique of omnipotence. “So The OORD clearly has the power to ‘give agency,’ and The OORD uses that power to do just that. This brings us to a crucial question: does The OORD have the freedom and agency to do otherwise?”⁸ Redundantly, McCall goes on to ask a series of questions in response to Oord’s use of Hartshorne that he could have answered himself if he had carefully read The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence or any of the previous works of Oord that specifically address the nature of God’s power in-depth.⁹ Instead of familiarizing himself with Oord’s theology, McCall constructs a specter of his own design so that he may exorcize it with little resistance. Seemingly unaware, McCall concludes this section by doing what he accuses Oord of doing in the second section of his response: quitting. “To replace GOD with The OORD is simply quitting.”¹⁰ Here is McCall: “Yes, there is a lot of evil in the world and way too much innocent suffering, but there simply is nothing else to be done. It just is what it is.”¹¹ Apparently McCall’s argument here is less radical than Oord’s proposed solution to the problem(s) of evil.

Section IV of McCall’s response is the most intellectually honest and consistent of the five that comprise the article. Here, instead of disguising insults and lack of acquaintance with Oord’s work as analysis, McCall engages the existential register. If the God of amipotence as proposed by Oord cannot defeat evil then it is an appropriate question to ask where humanity can place its divine hope. McCall asks this very question. This is an ongoing debate and conversation among process theologians. Unfortunately, McCall does not familiarize himself with the history of process theological thought or he might have been able to formulate an argument against the eschatological implications of Oord’s theology of amipotence rather than hurl proof texts from Christian Scripture without any real systematizing of these texts into a coherent argument. In fact, it would have benefited McCall to address Oord’s own appeal to Christian Scripture in any way as he dedicates an entire chapter to the biblical reasons why an amipotent God is plausible.¹² Alas, we get absolutely zero treatment of Oord’s exegesis or hermeneutics by McCall–and very little in-depth analysis of any other aspect of Oord’s theology or philosophy. Instead, we get foundationless conclusions such as “[Oord’s theology] encounters the same challenges as traditional doctrine–but it does so while cutting itself off from the resources available to address the problem.”¹³

One of the main arguments for Oord’s theology of amipotence is not only the charging of an omnipotent God with the refusal to prevent evil when an omnipotent God is capable of preventing that evil, but whose omnipotence also implicates God as the cause of evil. No response is given to this aspect of Oord’s theology whatsoever. McCall does indeed address the issue of compatibilism, but absolutely ignores the implications that it is possible to conclude that an omnipotent God under compatibilism may still be the cause of evil. Oord’s theodicy is not dealt with in and of itself. Again, McCall brings up logical theological formulations of the problem of evil from other theologians and philosophers. He then extracts logical arguments from theologians such as Alvin Plantinga and vaguely alludes to the nature of these arguments as if they have dealt with the issues brought up by Oord with finality, keeping his hands free from doing any real work in dealing with Oord’s theology. Again, one must ask the question: did McCall even read The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence?

The doctrine of God is to be taken seriously. It is clear that both McCall and Oord approach their theologies with utmost resolve. This is not a defense of Oord or his theology (although I largely embrace Oord’s criticisms and theological solutions). Criticism is good for improving ourselves and one another while generating constructive dialogue. What is not constructive is haphazardly attacking another theologian by caricaturing them and their theology. That is why it is important to critique this response. McCall outright dismisses Oord without giving him the professional courtesy of taking him seriously, reading him carefully, and responding with intellectual humility. Instead, what is given is a hotly and quickly written response that would make the reader believe to be witnessing mere squabbling rather than an intellectual rebuttal that is led by appeals to reason, experience, tradition, and Scripture. Among the many theological battles going on within and without the Wesleyan Theological Society, it is critical that humility, poise, respect, and, most importantly, Christlikeness inform our dialogues and debates if we are to flourish in the future.

1. Thomas H. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil: A Response to Thomas Jay Oord,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 59, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 31-42

2. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 32.

3. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 33.

4. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 33.

5. Thomas Jay Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023), 79.

6. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 35.

7. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 95-98.

8. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 37.

9. See Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015) and Pluriform Love: An Open and Relational Theology of Well-Being (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023).

10. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 35.

11. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 39.

12. Oord, The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence, 11-40.

13. McCall, “‘Amipotence’ is Not a ‘Solution’ to the Problem of Evil,” 42.

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