Omnipotent

• The Idea of Divine Power:

  • Can God create a stone even he can't lift?
  • Aquinas - logically impossible actions are not actions as they are not real things as they fall outside God's omnipotence
  • omnipotence could be seen as be able to do the logically impossible
  • US Philosopher George Mavrodes - no limitation to God's omnipotence - but if it is self contradictory then its inherent nonsense
  • C.S. Lewis - referencing a rock is nonsense
  • but he can't be all powerful if he can't lift the rock
  • problem of evil
• Idea of Divine Power: pt 2

  • creation story supports an all powerful God
  • if he wasn't all powerful he wouldn't be powerful enough to help with human salvation
  • Anselm + Descarte depended on this for the ontological arguments
• Peter Geach said that God was rather all mighty rather than all powerful. He has the capacity to have power over everything rather than have the power to do everything.
• Peter Vardy said that God created the world in a way which limited his power - a self - imposed limitation
• William Lane Craig said that God can do anything that is possible according to his nature
• William of Ockham: said that God had two powers. That being absolute and ordained
• Absolute power


  options available before action - creates the word (power he had in the beginning)
• Ordained power:


  options currently available to God - after creation (power he has now)
• Etymology:

  • John Macquarrie was a Scottish Priest and theologian - Gods power is different from our power" and "We see power through human eyes, whereas we need to see power on a divine scale"
  • Whitehead and Hartshorne - not about perfect power "but rather power that can't be surpassed" Nobody more powerful than God
• The Euthyphro dilemma:


  Does God command what is good, or is everything God's commands and therefore Good
• Omnipotence denotes an ability to bring about any logical possible state of affairs

  Swinburne
• a narrow omnipotence consisting in the possession of all logically possible powers 


  Anthony Kenny
• Descartes: omnipotence

  • A tiny minority of theologians and philosophers, most notably Descartes, argue for ‘voluntarism’; the view that God’s omnipotence involves the power to do anything, even the logically impossible. Descartes gives the example that God could have made it false that twice four makes eight.
  • Descartes concludes that logic is a human limitation, but not a limitation for God on which all things, including maths and logic, depend. Thus, the rules of logic are decided by God and they then emanate from his mind.
• Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.


  Mark 10:18 - if God can do anything does this have to be good
• in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,


  Titus 1:2 - Can God do everything including lie
• Woe to them, because they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, because they have rebelled against me! I long to redeem them but they speak about me falsely


  Hosea 7:13
• Something is good, if it has the right qualities. It is fair and just.