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'Boethius’ ideas were successfully updated by St Anselm' Discuss(40)
How far is it true to claim that it is not necessary to resolve the conflicts between divine attributes.(40)
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The Nature of God/Attributes of God
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‘God can do the logically possible’
The nature of God as being omnipotent has been discussed and debated across
Biblical study, philosophy and theology. There are several different positions held
by philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes and Peter Vardy
concerning the issues of defining God’s omnipotence, each with varying
strengths and weaknesses. Through critical analysis, it will become clear that
God can only do what is logically possible.
God can only do what is logically possible as this allows us to have a relationship
with him. Descartes unconvincingly argued that God can do absolutely anything
and this includes the logically impossible. God is the source of logic and has the
power to suspend logic or replace it whenever he wants. This means he could
make a square circle and could make 2+2=5. However, if we understand God to
be capable of doing the logically impossible Descartes turns God into an
unpredictable and arbitrary tyrant. If God was really all-powerful in the sense of
being capable of doing anything and everything, God has to be capable of doing
evil, of being unforgiving, of turning against us and of failing. God is presented as
a being humans cannot rely on nor can hope to understand. It becomes difficult
to have a relationship with God or trust in him for salvation. Furthermore, the
Bible itself does not support Descartes as it emphasises that ‘it is impossible for
God to lie’ (Hebrews). Whilst the power and greatness of God is on a scale way
beyond anything that humans can do or imagine God can only do what is
logically possible as this is the only way we can conceive of a relationship with
him.
God's omnipotent nature should be understood to be confined by the laws of
logic because if God’s omnipotence extended to logical absurdities there would
be a contradiction. The paradox of the stone illustrates the absurdity that would
follow if God was able to do the logically impossible. The paradox of the stone is
the question of whether God can create a stone too heavy for an omnipotent
being to lift. If he could create the stone that would mean that there was
something that God could not do(lift the stone) and if he couldn’t make the stone
this would mean that there is something that he made(the stone). Since by
definition an omnipotent being could lift any stone, there is no such thing as a
stone too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift and is thus a contradiction.
Instead, it is more convincing to understand that God is omnipotent in the sense
of being able to do ‘everything that is absolutely possible…everything that does
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