CONTEXT OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Some critics argue that the idea of omnipotence is contradictory, that it leads to the Paradox of Omnipotence. This is summed up in the question of whether God can create a rock so heavy that not even he can lift it.
P1. God either can or cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it.
P2. If God can create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent. P3. If God cannot create a rock that is so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God is not omnipotent. C. God cannot be omnipotent. |
God can do all things that are possible - Thomas Aquinas
meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can” - C.S. Lewis
Charles Hartshorne takes a different view. He argues that omnipotence cannot mean absolute power. This is because power is the ability to influence other things and, if those things exist, they must be able to resist power to some extent, because that's what 'existing' (rather than 'not existing') means. This makes absolute or perfect power a contradictory thing in a universe where things other than God exist.
there must be some resistance, however slight, to the "absolute" power, and how can power which is resisted be absolute? - Charles Hartshorne |
There are several problems with the idea of omniscience. One is the problem of experiential knowledge (knowledge that only comes from experiencing something).
For example, knowledge of what it is like to sin can only be acquired by sinning. Since God cannot sin, he can't know what it's like to sin, so there is a limit to his knowledge. This idea is often summed up by the Viet Nam meme, which says you can't know what Viet Nam was like if you weren't there yourself.
There's a similar meme which says that if you can remember the 1960s, then you can't really have been there. |
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Three famous examples illustrate this.
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There are two responses made by some Christians. One is universalism (the idea that everyone reaches heaven) and the other is annihilationism (the idea that the souls of sinners are simply destroyed and don't have any afterlife at all).
Both of these views suffer from being contradicted by the Bible - and not the older 'mythological' parts of the Bible, but the New Testament and the words of Jesus himself. |
God is the same as his essence - Thomas Aquinas