God’s Kenotic Love-Power – a Defense of Relational Theology and the Vulnerability in Love

Abstract This article presupposes that God should, first and foremost, be understood as essentially loving. From this, this article constructively proposes divine power as kenotic love-power for the Other and shows how this is coherent with different forms of theism. Such love-power always promotes the well-being of the Self-Other in a mutually loving relationship without connotations of self-negation or self-humiliation often associated with kenosis. If love is primary, theists should seek relational theology where God and creation relate to each other and affect each other. Panentheism is one example of relational theology, and so is open theism. Pantheism, on the other hand, is incoherent with the suggested notion of relational kenotic love-power. Several theologians argue that God necessarily loves the world and that God’s love is kenotic. However, kenosis is connected to ideas of self-negation and emptying of the self. From a feminist perspective, this is problematic. This article constructively puts forward an understanding of kenotic love-power that takes this feminist critique seriously and suggests that divine loving power should be understood not as self-limitation or self-abnegation but as self-realization through love and acceptance of that which is Other . It suggests a necessary Self-Other relationship because, without the Self, the Other cannot be. If that were so, there could not be a relationship at all. This model suits panentheists, process-panentheists, and open theists but not pantheists.