Philosophy: Nature of God - Omnipotence Part 2

What 4 main ways in which philosophers view God’s omnipotence?

1. God’s ability to do anything, including the logically impossible (Descartes, criticisms from Mackie, Vardy & Flew).

2. God’s ability to do what is logically possible.

3. Perphaps God deliberately limits his own power for our benefit.

4. Other definitions (Kenny & Geach)/

What does Descartes argue about Omnipotent?

• God can do anything, including the logically impossible. i.e. God isn’t limited by the laws of logic - God created them & so can break them.

• Descartes - ‘If God had to comform to the laws of logic then this would limit his power. God, therefore, must be able to do anything - including the logically possible… like making square circles.’

• The Bible seems to accept that there are some things that God cannot do.

• ‘God is not human, that he should lie, not a human bieng, that he should change his mind. Soes he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?’ Numbers 23:19.

What do other thinkers about this perspective? (God can do anything including the logically impossible)

Peter Vardy argues:

• God then could be fundamentally evil - lie, deceive etc.

• This is ‘incoherent’.

• The resulting God should not be worth worshipping.

• Logic marks the limits of what it makes sense to talk about.

• ‘square circles’ are meaningless?

• No limitation on God’s power if he can’t do this!

J.L Mackie:

• Saying that God can’t do the logically impossible doesn’t actually refer to anything, as there’s no such thing as ‘logically impossible’.

General Criticism:

• If God is not limited by anything (including logic) this can lead to bizarre questions e.g. can God create a married Batchelor?

• Could God arrange affairs that he both exists and does not exist at the same time?

What does Anthony Flew say about God’s Omnipotence and Descartes?

• If God can do the logically impossible, then God could have brought about a contradictory state of affairs.

• God could have create this ‘utopian hypothesis’.

• But didn’t God is malevolent & playing with people’s lives in not brining this about.

What does C.S Lewis say about Descartes’s perspective?

• Simply adding the words ‘God can’ to the beginning of a nonsense sentence doesn’t change the meaning. Thus, saying God can create a square circles is still nonsense.

• Descartes’s view has been widely criticised because it seems to be based on confused and conflicting reasoning.

What is Aquinas’s view on God’s Omnipotence? (1)

God can do anything that is logically possible for him to do

• God’s power is omnipotent in the sense that he is in charge of the whole world and keeps it in existence.

• It follows then that God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with his nature because that would imply contradiction, e.g. God is incorporeal (has no body) so he cannot swim or ride a bike. He is perfectly good therefore cannot do evil.

• God can do anything logically possible, but if it is not logically possible then it cannot be done even by God.

What is Aquinas’s view on God’s Omnipotence? (2)

Abraham and Sarah - God asks ‘Is there anything too hard for God?’ - this implies that God can do anything he wants to - Christian thinkers have used this to try and resolve the problems with God’s omnipotence.

If he can do anything he wants then he is omnipotent but there are things that God would never want to do like breaking the law of logic, being unjust or failing.

How does Aquinas summarise his view in Summa Theologica?

• ‘he can do everything that is absolutely possible… everything that does not imply a contradiction is among those possibilties in respect of which God is called omnipotent’

What does Richard Swinburne argue about God’s Omnipotence? (1)

Swinburne - in his book The coherence of Theism (1977) - God’s omnipotence means that he can do everything.

• ‘Everything’ has to be understood properly.

• God can do and create all thing but self-contradictory definitions do not refer to ‘things’.

• A square circle is not a thing so God cannot make one.

• A stone too heavy for God to lift is not a thing so God could not make one.

This does then challenge his omnipotence because he can still do everything and create everything.

What does Richard Swinburne argue about God’s Omnipotence? (2)

• So, Swinburne argue that God’s omnipotence must be limited to the logically possible.

• This may involve some self-limitation to allow freedom to humans who are not (and cannot by definition be) controlledy by God.

• Has God then relinquished some of his power and therefore his omnipotence?

What does Peter Vardy say about God’s Omnipotence?

Perhaps God deliberately limits his own power for our benefit

(The Puzzle of Evil, 1992)

• Omnipotence is much more limited than many Christians have previously suggested.

• God is not in control of the whole of history, able to move anything around like pieces on a chessboard, Vardy argues, and it is wrong to suggest that everything that happens is because of the will of God.

• Vardy suggests that God created the universe in such a way that his ability to act is necessarily limited.

• The whole universe is finely tuned in such a way that if God acted in any different way, everything would not be able to exist in the way it does.

• He argues the universe is perfectly suited for the existence of free, rational human beings, and that in order for it to remain this way, God’s omnipotence has to be very much limited.

• However, the limitation is self-imposed, God’s omnipotence has to be very much limited knowing what it would mean, and therefore it is still right to called God omnipotent because nothing limits his power except when he chooses.

What does Peter Geach say about God’s omnipotence

• The word omnipotence comes from the Lation ‘Onipotens’.

• However, NT was written in Greek and the word ‘Pantokrator’, which translates as ‘almighty’ was used to describe God.

• This is best understood as a capacity for power, power over everything rather than the power to do everything.

• This seems to side-step many of the discussions above because being all-powerful no longer requires ‘doing’ anything.

What does Anthony Kenny say about God’s omnipotence?

• Tries to solve this problem by extending the definition to ‘the possession of all logically possible powers which it is logically possible for a being with the attributes of God to have’.

• There is no differene between what God has the power to do and what is logically possible for God to do.

• E.g. it is logically possible for me to swim the English channel, however I could not do that.