Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3 that we are God's synergoi (συνεργοί). Co-workers. Same Greek root that gave us "synergy." Yes, the cringy corporate term your VP uses when announcing a reorg, the one that makes you want to crawl out the conference room window. That word. Paul got there first.
C. S. Lewis, in his essay "The Efficacy of Prayer," catches something in this idea:
For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.
Lewis is half-right. The half he gets right is that God works through us. The half I want to push back on is the word delegate.
Delegation assumes the boss could do the work alone and chooses not to. That's the manager's framework, but I don't think it's God's. I don't think God can get what They want by going it alone or by force. The constraint isn't a self-imposed restraint that gets lifted at the eschaton. The constraint is inherent in God is.
Two Pictures
I’ve got two metaphors in mind
The first is the parent who hangs back on purpose. “Dad, why won’t you make my lunch?!” Dad won't because dad wants the kid to learn. Pedagogical withholding—real, common, often wise. This is the Lewis frame: God as patient teacher slowing down so the children can grow into competence.
The second metaphor, however, is the disabled parent. Or, better, the partner, since a child shouldn't be parentified. The spouse who depends on help. Not as a teaching exercise but as a fact of life. Some things require two pairs of hands, and one of those pairs is yours. The need is real.
The first metaphor is about formation. The second is about partnership. They are not the same picture. And we have been handed the first one when the second one is closer to true.
No One Does Anything Alone
Even setting God aside for a moment: no one truly does anything singlehandedly. The bread you eat passed through a hundred hands before it reached your kitchen. The language you think in was given to you. Your immune system runs on bacteria you did not invite and could not live without. The human condition is dependence: on each other, on creation, on systems older and weirder than you.
This is uncontroversial when applied to humans. Push it toward God and folks get nervous. Isn't God an entirely different category, the only being who needs nothing?
The classical answer is yes. Aseity—God's self-existence—has been a load-bearing wall of Christian theology for a long time.
But notice what Christians also confess. God is Trinity. Three persons, one essence, eternal mutual self-giving. Whatever else that mystery means, it cannot mean isolation. The Father is Father only in relation to the Son. The Son is Son only in relation to the Father. The Spirit proceeds. At the deepest level of the divine life, there is no monad. There is communion.
If the inner life of God is mutual dependence, if love is what God is and not only what God does, then the question shifts. The question is no longer whether God can be needy. The question is whether God can be anything other than the one who shares the work.
Love Cannot Coerce
Love cannot coerce. That's a definitional claim, not a sentimental one. The moment love is forced rather than chosen, it stops being love and becomes ownership.
If God is love itself, then the kind of power available to God is not the kind that overrides the will of the beloved. Invitation is God's native language. Coercion would be a betrayal of God's own being.
Paul calling us synergoi, then, is not flattery but a description. God is not pretending to need us so we'll feel important about ourselves. God is not in the back room doing all the real work and giving us busywork to keep us occupied. God is dependent on our cooperation to accomplish the ends of mutual flourishing. The "co" in co-worker is true.
Why God Doesn't Stop the Worst
I admit, when my theology moved this direction, I found it quite disorienting. But I find the alternative worse.
There is a lot of fist-shaking at God going on right now, and the fists are not wrong. We’re watching Black Americans lose their civil and voting rights. Iran is being bombed for no reason any honest person can defend. Israel is committing genocide. Putin will not be stopped by anyone except the Ukrainians dying every day to stop him. The question rises and will not be put down. Why won't God do something?
Two potential answers are on the table.
First: God could do more but is choosing not to. We chalk it up to mystery, or we admit, with a knot in the stomach, that the God we are describing is a moral monster—a being who could halt a genocide and instead watches it on the news with the rest of us.
The second: God is doing all that God can do. Exerting the maximum influence available to a being whose nature is love and therefore cannot violate the freedom of the beloved. Wooing, calling, agitating, pleading, partnering. Refusing to seize. Love cannot seize and still be love.
The second answer is harder to recognize as orthodoxy because most of us were raised on a version of omnipotence that looks more like Caesar than like Christ. Letting that picture of God go feels heretical at first. It is not. It is faith catching up with the God who showed up, got himself crucified, refusing the legions Peter wanted him to call, dying because no other kind of power was available without ceasing to be God.
The God Who Asks
I find comfort in this. "God has a plan" no longer has to mean "God's plan involved standing by while billions suffered." It can mean God is doing everything God can, and is asking us—synergoi, co-workers, partners, spouses, the beloved who also happen to be needed—to do the parts God cannot do alone.
Slowly. Blunderingly. With a God who is doing the same.
From 1 Cor 3, "We are God's co-workers." Synergeo. Yes the cringy corporate term.
C. S. Lewis:
For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye
However, I don't think that God is delegating. I believe God literally cannot accomplish what They want to accomplish without us. God cannot singlehandedly, coercively get what They want.
I feel like there's two metaphors. There's the one of the parent purposely limiting themselves in order to teach a child to do something on their own. "Dad, why don't you just make my lunch?" "Because I want you to learn how to make your own lunch."
But then I think about the disabled parent who actually relies on their child or partner to assist them. Maybe partner is the better metaphor; a child should not be parentified. Point is, a disabled parent still cannot do something singlehandedly.
Actually, none of us can do anything singlehandedly. The human experience is essentially one of interdependence: on each other, nature.
But isn't God different? Isn't God of a different category, creator, not created? The only fully self-sufficient being?
But even then, God is not self-sufficient. God is a Trinity, a community, mutual dependence.
And, since God is love, and therefore is essentially (by their very nature; ontologically) unable to be coercive, that means that God is not merely pretending to be dependent on us in order to teach us a lesson. God is truly dependent on our cooperation in order to accomplish divine purposes of mutual flourishing.
There is a lot fist-shaking at God right now, deservedly so. Black folks are losing their civil and voting rights. Iran is being bombed for no discernibly good reason. Israel is committing genocide. No one will truly stand up to Putin except for Ukraine. Why won't God do anything?
And here is the rub. We can either believe that God could be doing more but is choosing not to (which then we have to chalk up to "mystery," which is not very satisfying; or we just throw up our hands and say God is a moral monster); or we can believe that God is doing all They can do, exerting the maximum amount of influence They can exert without violating anyone's free will; but instead wooing us to do what God cannot do alone.
That second option is quite disorienting for those who have always been taught about an omnipotent God. But I find letting go of the omnipotent God allows for a much more coherent and satisfying theology of the God of love. I don't have to pretend that "God has a plan" means "God's plan means standing by while billions of people suffer." I can believe "God's plan means doing all They can and asking us to partner with Them."
