Nihilifying the (m)other - Omnipotence Part 2

2. Why I dislike omnipotence. I recommend that you read Part 1 here/here first.

'Omnipotence', as traditionally held, posits an all-powerful God who is over-against the world. This is a big problem. Any person/God who knew about the German/Jewish Holocaust and was able to stop it sooner and didn't is complicit in those crimes, is evil, and frankly does not deserve my worship. (I don't want to diminish other evils and genocides in the world - of which there are too many - I'm just using this as an example.) So assuming some form of omnipresence (one of the omni's I like) and at least some basic awareness (to be able to interact meaningfully with humanity), a good God must have been aware of the holocaust, and so cannot be omnipotent.

However, I am also going to add to this a much rarer (new?) argument that I came across through the work of Catherine Keller in The Face of the Deep. In this book she argues for a creation from chaos, and on page 57 writes,

"Athanasius characterises 'weakness' as the demiurge's inability to 'produce anything He makes without the material, just as it is without doubt a weakness of the carpenter not to be able to make anything required without his timber.' The argument is circular, already presupposing that the standard of excellence - power - is this ability to make something from nothing. Yet the strength of any craftsperson is measured by the ability to work with what is available."

Later on page 94 she quotes Karl Barth and writes,

"'The existence of the cosmos is [effected] by the will and deed of a God who disposes and acts without any presuppositions.' Without conditions - from outside. Any maternity of spirit... would relativise God's omnipotence."

Finally, in Forgetting of Air Luce Irigaray writes, "Man provides a foundation for himself on the basis of reducing to nothingness that from which the foundation proceeds." So this is what I'm thinking: Barth is following the general patriarchal (and omnipotence-affirming) tendency to "nihilify the (m)other." (page 44) The drive to escape presuppositions is a similar drive as the problematic/impossible modernist drive to gain objectivity. This is the desire to escape ones birth, to distance oneself from reliance on the (m)other. It is the desire to declare oneself immortal, un-relational, autonomous, necessary.

In other words, the claim 'God can act without presuppositions' is made because humans (men) are unwilling to admit their own dependence and mortality. Omnipotence can be closely tied to this because a God who relies on presuppositions is often seen to be weak. "As for most theists still: God is either omnipotent or He is impotent." (Keller, 94) I'd like to think a relational third space is possible.