In appreciation of T.D. Burnette's Essay in Amipotence
'Not only is God’s name Love, but Love is also the name of the universe. In our utterings, as each of us reach for something real to say about our experience here in the world, if we can conjure up the name “Love” on our lips, it just might give us the freedom that each of us desire: namely the freedom to give ourselves back to the world. And, as we learn to give ourselves back to the fullness of our lives—even in tragedy, death, and suffering—we might even come to know that all of it is held by, in, and as, Love… And it is in the beauty of this Love, that we can find Peace amidst the passage of all things.'
- Tim Burnette, "Love: The Name of the Universe," in Amipotence, SacraSage Press, 2025
Amipotence as Ultimate Love
Amipotence means something like an ultimate Love in the presence of which we live and move and have our being. It is not an object among objects in the mind's eye. Instead it is a river in which we swim, otherwise called the universe, that is everywhere at once, but never in a coercive way. The word Love may not always come easily to us. and sometimes we must find other names: Beauty, the Universe, Peace or God, for example. And sometimes it is better to have no names. Still, says Tim Burnette, we may well sense that we are enfolded within, and lured by, something that is more than us but also within us: a nourishing something that is not all powerful but indeed all guiding, all tender, and all beautiful. We are enfolded within Amipotence.
In the open and relational tradition, amipotence is often attributed to God, much like a predicate is attached to the subject of a sentence. People commonly say, “God is amipotent,” and then add, if they are within the open and relational tradition, “but not omnipotent.” However, Thomas Oord’s introduction to Amipotence contains two sentences that invite a slightly different interpretation:
“Amipotence is the most powerful force in this universe and in every other that might exist. The Spirit is strong.”
These sentences suggest the possibility of viewing amipotence as a force or Spirit in its own right, existing everywhere at once—uncoupled from the word God. The word God may or may not be attached to the word amipotence. In either case, amipotence is, as Oord says, the most powerful force in this universe and in any other that might exist. It is Amipotence with an upper-case "A."
Amipotence as Divine Activity
Oord and many others in the open and relational tradition do not undertake this uncoupling of Amipotence from God. For them, it is important to think of amipotence as a property or predicate attached to a subject named God. In their view, God is a disembodied Spirit with purposes and intentions, who both listens to the world—feeling the feelings of each and all empathically —and responds to what is felt by offering fresh possibilities for flourishing. God’s responses are often described as “luring” or “wooing” creation toward these possibilities. Within this framework, amipotence becomes a way of describing God’s dual activity: the act of listening and the act of luring. It signifies the ultimate love through which God empathizes with creation and invites it into new and transformative ways of being. This traditional framework assumes that acts of listening and luring cannot be properties of a force or perhaps even a Spirit, because such a force lacks personality. Instead, listening and luring must belong to something akin to the subject of a sentence, with the subject distinct from its predicates. Love must somehow be a property of something that possesses it.
A Process View of Being and Activity
However, with its critique of ontologies based on subject-predicate grammar, the process tradition offers an alternative understanding. Rather than treating sentient beings, including God, as analogous to the subjects of a sentence, the process tradition understands them as their relational activities of feeling and responding to the world. On this view, subjects, including subjects with personalities, are not separate from their activities; they are their activities. This is true of us humans and all other sentient beings: we human beings do not stand outside our lives as separate observers, as if we were sitting by a river watching our lives pass by in the waters. We are our activities of experiencing and responding to the world, alongside other living subjects who are likewise swimming in the river. We are always already in the river.
From this perspective, God does not merely possess amipotence as a predicate. Instead, God is the activity of amipotence. Or, to put it another way, the activity of amipotence is God. This relational view dissolves the distinction between subject and predicate, emphasizing the inseparability of being and activity. God’s river, so to speak, is the universe itself and any other worlds that might exist./ Yes, there is a listening and luring at work throughout the universe, and this listening and luring is God. Divine love is not a separate subject; it the deepest and most powerful current in the river itself, by which each and all are influenced, in whose life all lives are enfolded, and by whom all lives are lovingly caressed.
God as Both Many and One
The process tradition adds another important idea: the activity of any living subject—including the divine subject—cannot be sharply separated from the world to which it listens and responds. Just as, in listening to music, the music becomes part of our listening, so in listening to the world, the world becomes part of God’s listening. This means that God is both many and one: the subjective unification of the universe’s manyness, and the manyness that is unified subjectively. God is the universe, and Love is God’s name.
Do We Need the Word God?
How necessary is the word God to all of this? For some people, including me, it feels natural and inviting. The word carries with it a sense of relational intimacy, evoking a presence that listens, responds, and participates in life’s unfolding. I pray to God often, and when I pray I sense that someone or something is listening.
For others, however, the word God is deeply problematic. They may fully embrace the idea of a cosmic Love—a force that listens and lures—but find the word God too burdened by associations with an objectified, distant deity. For them, God is often conceived as something static, akin to the grammatical subject of a sentence, fixed in nature while predicates are attached to describe it. This understanding feels limiting, even alienating.
Amipotence Without God
These individuals may need Amipotence without God, or at least without the word God. Their discomfort may stem from one or both of two reasons.
First, the word God is too often linked to an authoritarian or domineering figure—a being who exists apart from the world, wielding control rather than embodying relationality. This conception of God is antithetical to the openness, fluidity, and vulnerability implied by Amipotence.
Second, the linguistic habits of objectifying God—treating the divine as a subject distinct from its actions—may feel philosophically or emotionally inadequate. For such individuals, Love alone may suffice. Amipotence as ultimate love, as the most powerful force in the universe, becomes for them an invitation to participate in a relational cosmos without the need for the word God.
A Spacious Home
In this sense, the open and relational tradition offers a spacious home for diverse ways of understanding a cosmic Love that is at the heart of reality. For some, God and Amipotence are inseparable, two ways of speaking of the same listening and luring presence. For others, Amipotence can stand alone, as a name for a universal force of love that transcends the limits of any particular vocabulary. In either case, the central truth remains: there is a listening and a luring at work in the cosmos, an inwardly felt call toward flourishing, receptive to the joys and sorrows of each and all, a force of ultimate love. Whether this is called God, Love, or simply Amipotence, its invitation is the same—to join in the river of relational life, where being and activity are one and the same.
Love has many Names
in appreciation of Tim Burnette
'Not only is God’s name Love, but Love is also the name of the universe. In our utterings, as each of us reach for something real to say about our experience here in the world, if we can conjure up the name “Love” on our lips, it just might give us the freedom that each of us desire: namely the freedom to give ourselves back to the world. And, as we learn to give ourselves back to the fullness of our lives—even in tragedy, death, and suffering—we might even come to know that all of it is held by, in, and as, Love… And it is in the beauty of this Love, that we can find Peace amidst the passage of all things.'
- "Love: The Name of the Universe," in Amipotence, SacraSage Press, 2025
Tim Burnette’s essay, Love: The Name of the Universe, invites us into a spacious and inclusive vision of God and Love, one that embraces mystery, relationality, and the poetic nature of language. By resisting the urge to pin these words down with rigid definitions, Burnette opens a pathway for engaging with their deeper meaning—an engagement shaped by lived experience, by moments of longing, suffering, beauty, and community.
For Burnette, Love is not merely a sentiment or an abstraction; it is the creative force at the heart of existence—a "harmonious relationality" that animates the universe and our lives within it. This vision transcends the limitations often imposed on the words God and Love, allowing them to remain dynamic and deeply intertwined with the mysteries of life.
Yet Burnette is not blind to the struggles many face with these words. His essay makes room for those who find God unusable, offering instead the possibility of alternative names--Harmony, Eros, Beauty, Peace,the Universe, or, so I add above, Amipotence. In this way, his work exemplifies the openness of the open and relational tradition: a tradition that does not demand adherence to specific language but instead honors the diverse ways people encounter the sacred.
In the end, Love: The Name of the Universe is not merely an invitation to use the words God and Love. It is an invitation to live into their reality, to swim in the ocean of harmonious relationality, and to discover for ourselves the words—or silences—that best capture the sacredness of our lives. Whether we use the language of God, Love, Beauty, or something else entirely, Burnette’s vision encourages us to embrace a spirituality that is as expansive as the universe itself.