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The Nature and Attributes of God Summary for A-level Philosophy
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'Boethius’ ideas were successfully updated by St Anselm' Discuss(40)
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Have Boethius, Anselm or Swinburne successfully resolved problems connected with God’s attributes and human free will?
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The nature or attributes of GodOmnipotent All-powerful
Omniscient All-knowing
Omnibenevolent All-good and all-loving
Eternal Timeless, atemporal, being outside of time
Everlasting Sempiternal, lasting forever on the same timeline as humanity
Free will The ability to make independent choices
Existentialism A way of thinking that emphasises personal freedom of choice
Immutable Incapable of changing or being affected
Different religions can have different understandings of the nature and attributes of God. In Hinduism
for example, one God can be understood in many different forms and in Islam the oneness of Allah is
emphasised alongside the complete dependence of humanity on Allah. Likewise, Christians have their
own traditions; in the Old Testament, God seems to be involved in the world and have thoughts and
feelings – he is satisfied when people obey his Commandments and angry and disappointed when
they fail. God is concerned with moral behaviour, taking an interest in what people do and passing
judgement on the decisions that they make, suggesting that whatever they do is their own choice and
when they do wrong, it is their own fault. However, in the New Testament, ideas from Plato and
Aristotle were adopted. This sometimes is woven successfully but has also produced contradictions.
The idea of divine power
Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? On the one hand omnipotence involves being able to
do absolutely anything but there are things that even an omnipotent being cannot do, such as ‘fail at a
task’. These problems are referred to as ‘the omnipotence paradox’ where the who notion of total
power seems to be contradictory. Another problem arises when people question whether
omnipotence can be compatible with his other characteristics, such as omnibenevolence, as he would
be able to evil, as he can do everything, but also unable to do evil, as he is all-loving.
“And God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” is an example of God being omnipotent. He
also helps Sarah and Abraham in the book of Genesis to have a child when she is past child baring
age. There is also a similar story in Luke’s gospel where Mary, mother of Jesus, hears from the angel
that her cousin Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist but, like Sarah, she is also past child
baring age. Jesus' miracles are also examples of God’s omnipotence such as walking on water,
changing water into wine and raising the dead.
Christian theologians have taken the view that if God was not omnipotent then he would not be able to
do things necessary for human salvation. He would not be able to carry out his plans for the universe
and he would not be able to save people from their sins and he would not be able to resurrect people
from the dead and give them eternal life in heaven. This is supported by Anselm’s ontological
argument because if God was anything less than omnipotent, then we would be able to conceive of a
greater, more perfect and powerful being, so God, by definition, must be omnipotent.
Different understandings of omnipotence
Descartes came to the conclusion that God can do absolutely everything, even that which is logically
impossible. He could make a sqaure a circle and 2+2=5, because God does not have any limitations.
God is the source of all logic so can bend and suspend it when he wants. For Descartes, any other
interpretation of God’s omnipotence limits his greatness. Therefore, for Descartes, God could be
capable of doing evil and incapable of doing evil at the same time, even though it involves a logical
contradiction. Humans are limited by logic and can therefore not clearly see how this would work but
God can be self-contradictory because he is omnipotent.
However, most theologians argue against this interpretation. God can do anything but logical
contradictions are not things. It is not a lack of power that prevents God from creating a square circle,
but it's because square circles are nonsense. Descartes view of God also made him a tyrant who
could do evil, be unforgiving, turn against us and could fail. It presents God as a being that humans
could not rely upon and also means that God’s rules could also change at any second or be both true
and false at the same time. It makes it impossible for people to have a relationship with God or trust
, him for their salvation. Descartes view also presents problems for theodicy (arguments for the
existence of evil). They often argue that suffering is a price for free will but if God could do absolutely
anything, he could suspend the laws of logic and allow us to have us free will without evil but instead,
he does not and allows evil to exist in the world instead; this presents problems for God’s
omnibenevolence. Hebrews 6:18 also states that ‘it is impossible for God to lie’.
In Genesis, when Sarah is promised a child, God asks ‘Is anything too hard for God?’, implying that
God can do anything and everything that he wants to. If God is capable of doing absolutely anything
he wants to do, then he is omnipotent – but there are things that God would not want to do because
they are not within his nature, such as breaking the laws of logic or failing. Aquinas argued that God is
omnipotent because he is in charge of the whole world, created it and sustains it. He said that God is
omnipotent because ‘he can do everything that is absolutely possible’; he cannot do things that are
logically impossible because they are impossible, even for God. So, a square circle cannot simply be
made at all. It the follows that God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with his nature as this would
imply a contradiction. God is incorporeal (he has no body) and can therefore not swim, die or become
tired for example. Swinburne also takes this view. He argues that he can do and create all ‘things’ but
self-contradictory definitions do not refer to ‘things’. A square circle is not a ‘thing’, so God cannot
make one.
In 1992, Peter Vardy suggested that God’s omnipotence is much more limited than many Christians
have previously suggested. Vardy argues that God is not in control of history and cannot move
anything around like pieces on a chessboard and it is wrong to suggest that everything happens
because God wills it. He suggested that God created the universe in a way which that his ability to act
is limited. Everything in the universe is so finely tuned that if God acted in any other way, everything
would not exist as it does. In order for free, rational humans to exist, God has to limit his power, but
this limit is self-imposed. It is still right to call God omnipotent because nothing can limit him except
himself. John Macquarrie makes a similar point – God is not constrained by logic, nor by the physical
world, but he chooses to limit himself out of love for humanity.
In answer to the puzzle of how Jesus could have been the son of God, given that he did not always
display God’s attributes of omnipotence or being without a body, theologians have developed a
doctrine known as kenosis, which means ‘self-emptying’. This means that God deliberately emptied
himself of some of his divine attributes before coming to Earth in order to make Jesus’ encounter with
humanity possible. Jesus had to have human limitations in order to be a human and this was because
of God’s own choice and love.
Macquarrie and other thinkers also emphasise that when people are talking about God, they are using
an analogy as God’s power is very different from our own. Following Aquinas, he argues that there will
always be aspects of God’s nature that will be unknown to us. When we think of power, we place it in
the physical world, but our minds are fallible and limited, therefore we struggle to fully comprehend
God’s omnipotence.
A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne argued that total omnipotence would not in fact be a perfect
quality, so it would be better to think about God possessing power that cannot be surpassed by any
other being. Hartshorne considers that total power means that nothing else is able to put up any
resistance at all to that power. A totally omnipotent God would have total control over everything, and
nothing would be able to do anything unless God allowed it and controlled it. Hartshorne argues that
there is nothing impressive about a being that can conquer things that put up no resistance. It would
be like praising someone for winning a race with no other competitors. It is important to recognise that
through free will, people can resist God and therefore power over them is not total but it is greater
than any other being. For Hartshorne, omnipotence means that God can overcome all resistance, not
that God will meet no resistance.
Divine omniscience and God’s relationship with time
Most people understand omniscience to mean that God knows everything and there is nothing he
cannot know. It also means that he can also not be mistaken – if God knows something then it must
be true. God always knows the right thing to do, the best choices to make and which moral rules to
give. However, if God knows everything, does he also know the future as well as the past? If he
knows what moral decisions people will make, it raises the question on whether we truly have free
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