The Nature or Attributes of God
• Omnipotence:
Aquinas on what God is incapable of:
• Though omnipotent, there are some things He cannot do. E.g he cannot
lack anything, he cannot fail, he cannot be weary or forgetful, he cannot
suffer violence, he cannot repent or be angry or sorrowful.
• God can do everything “that is absolutely possible” - can’t do anything
inconsistent with his nature, e.g he cannot swim because he is naturally
incorporeal.
• Swinburne supports in The Coherence of Theism (1977) arguing that
God can do ‘everything’. But self-contrary definitions do not refer to
‘things’. So his omnipotence isn’t challenged, God remains capable of
doing everything, just defining what omnipotence really means.
Descartes’ Absolute Definition:
• In his Letter to Mersenne 15th April 1630: God can do anything - even
the logically impossible. He can even change the laws of maths and
logic because he created them. Similar to Euthyphro dilemma.
• “For with God, nothing shall be impossible” - Luke 1:37, “And God said,
‘let there be light’, and there was light” - Genesis 1:3
• Criticism: means God can do evil, be unforgiving, be a failure. God’s
rules could change at any time or be both true and false. This would
make the human-god relationship and trust bestowed in him for
salvation impossible.
• Also makes theodicies difficult. If God is capable of anything and
chooses to inflict suffering on us when there is no reason, it is difficult to
justify him as perfectly loving.
• “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18)
God deliberately limits his own power - Vardy:
- Vardy suggests universe is finely tuned so that if God acted in a different
way, everything that exists would not be the same. Universe is suited to
free rational humans so God must limit his omnipotence. Self-imposed
limit. So it is still right to call God omnipotent because nothing limits his
power except when he chooses.
• “God is limited by the universe he has chosen to create… his limitation
does not, however, lessen God in any significant way. It is rather a
recognition of God’s wish to create a universe in which human beings
can be brought into a loving relationship with him.” - Vardy, The Puzzle
of Evil (1992)
• John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology: We must
remember that when we speak of the power of God we are using
analogy (Aquinas) because we cannot grasp God's power because we
are fallible humans. Even if we can understand them partially, and
express this partial understanding with analogy, we should bear in mind
that we are fallible and so are unable to provide a full understanding of
, God.o God is not constrained by logic/physical world, chooses to limit
power out of love for humanity
God is ‘unsurpassingly great,’ not omnipotent - Process
Theologians:
- Whitehead + Hartshorne argue it is better to think of God as a being
whose power cannot be surpassed rather than a being with total power -
total power is not impressive, it just suggests there is no resistance. It is
more impressive for God to overcome resistance and be though of as
having power greater than any other being.
God and The Law of Non-Contradiction:
• Aristotle in Book 4 of Metaphysics lays down what he regards as the
‘most certain’ of all the first principles of knowledge: “the same
attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same
subject and in the same respect.”
• He says this principle is based on existence itself. Something cannot
both ‘be’ and ‘not be’ at the same time and the same way.
Aquinas ‘On the Power of God’:
• “Simultaneous affirmation and negation cannot have the nature of a
being or nonbeing.”
• Since “God [is] the greatest actuality and the chief being.” He cannot
‘be’ and 'not be’ at the same time.
• Fits with 2 Timothy 3:13: “God cannot deny himself.”
The Free Will Defence:
• The Free Will defence depends on accepting the belief that God can
only do what is logically possible (Aquinas).
• It also depends on a libertarian view of free will (free agents ‘could
have done otherwise’)
• Making humans free and determining them at the same time is not
logically possible. (Aquinas, Lewis, Swinburne)
• This solves Hume’s triangle by qualifying omnipotence.
J.L Mackie’s Challenge (1917-1981):
• In his essay ‘Evil and omnipotence’
• Accepts Hume’s triangle - considering classical theism inconsistent and
irrational.
• “God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent
automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go
wrong: there was open to him the obvious better possibility of making
beings who would act freely but always go right.”
• Mackie is adopting a soft determinist definition of freedom, he argues
that the alternative is randomness.
Flew’s Challenge:
• In his essay, ‘Divine omnipotence and human freedom’
