Doctrine of God (Part 16): Volitional Attributes: Omnipotence

4.  Volitional Attributes:  Omnipotence

                      a.  Analysis

1. Scriptural Data

We’ve been talking about God’s intellectual attributes as a personal being. Now we want to turn to God’s volitional attributes. As a personal being, God has volition – he has will. His volitional attributes are expressed in the attribute of omnipotence or being all-powerful. Let’s look at some of the scriptural data that is pertinent to the doctrine of God’s omnipotence or his being all-powerful.

First, the Bible indicates that God is almighty. Genesis 17:1 – this is the appearance of God to Abram – “When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless’.” The word there in the Hebrew translated as “God Almighty” is the familiar expression “El Shaddai.” God reveals himself to Abram as El Shaddai – God Almighty.

This same name for God carries through the Bible right to the last book of the New Testament, Revelation 19:6, when we see the marriage supper of the Lamb: “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.’” God is called “Almighty” in Scripture.

The almighty power of God in Scripture is most manifested in the act of creation. God creates the world out of nothing. He doesn’t need any material substratum (any matter or energy) out of which to create the world. He creates the matter and energy as well as the things that are constituted by matter and energy. The doctrine of creation out of nothing is the most powerful display of God’s omnipotence in the Scriptures.

Genesis 1:1 begins with the words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In other words, in the beginning God created the universe. Psalm 33:9 is a psalm that extols God’s power in creation. It says, “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth.” The creation simply comes into being at the verbal command of the Lord. His almighty word brings the universe into existence.

In Romans 4:17, Paul uses a striking phrase to characterize this creation out of nothing. In the latter part of that verse he speaks of Abraham’s being in the presence of God in whom he believed and then this phrase: “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Here the two mighty acts of God – creation and the resurrection – are mentioned as manifestations of his power. God is the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. I love that phrase. He calls these things into being even though they don’t exist. This is truly creation from nothing. He constitutes these things in being.

Secondly, the Scriptures indicate that God can do all things – or God can do anything. There are a number of scriptural passages that state this explicitly. Genesis 18:14 to begin with. This concerns the promise to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a child in their old age, which provokes laughter on Sarah’s part. But in verse 14 of Genesis 18, the Lord says, “Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you in the spring and Sarah shall have a son.” Notice the question there - “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” This question is purely a rhetorical question. The answer is clearly no, nothing is too hard for the Lord.

In Jeremiah 32:17 we have a similar question and answer. The question actually appears in verses 26 and 27 of Jeremiah 32: “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too hard for me?’” If you have any doubt about the answer to that question, look at verse 17: “Ah Lord GOD! It is thou who hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thy outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for thee.” The Scriptures say that nothing is too hard for God to do.

Job 42:1-2 is the final scene in the book of Job where Job realizes God’s incomprehensible greatness and his inability to fathom the power of God. In verse 1 of chapter 42, “Then Job answered the LORD: ‘I know that thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted.’” Here Job confesses that God can do all things.

This is not a doctrine confined to the Old Testament. It is repeated in the New Testament by Jesus himself. In Matthew 19:26, Jesus is speaking to his disciples. “Jesus looked to them and said to them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”

Also in Mark 14:36 we find Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.” So Jesus also affirms that God can do all things.

So we have the testimony of Scripture that God is almighty and can do all things.

                       (2)  Systematic summary

                           (a)  Definition of Omnipotence

Let’s reflect now on the attribute of omnipotence, which means being all-powerful. Intuitively, we should say that an omnipotent being has unlimited power, power that cannot possibly be exceeded.  Most traditional analyses of omnipotence, however, focus on the range of things that an omnipotent being can do, to the neglect of his power. But both the degree of one’s power and the range of things one can do must be taken into account. To illustrate, suppose two beings each have the same range of things they can do, but one finds it easy while the other finds it hard because he is not as powerful. The weaker being should not count as omnipotent even though he can do the same things. By the same token, think of a being who has unlimited power but who is unable to do certain things, not because of any lack of power on his part but because the things are logically impossible, like making a square circle. In such a case, the restrictions on the range of things he can do does not count against his omnipotence.

So adequate accounts of omnipotence must take into consideration both the degree of power and the range of things one can do. With respect to power we can say that if a being is omnipotent, then there is no state of affairs that he is unable to bring about due to lack of power. If there are things that an omnipotent being cannot do, that is not the result of a lack of power on his part. So we must consider the range of his power as well.

We are immediately confronted with the paradoxes of omnipotence. Although the Scriptures say that God can do all things, they also say that there are some things that God cannot do. It seems intuitively obvious that there are certain things that God cannot do. For example, can God act contrary to his own nature? If God has certain essential properties, then how could God possibly act in a way that would be contrary to his own essence or nature? For example, could God create another God and then worship it? That seems absolutely inconceivable. God cannot be created so God couldn’t create another God. It would be idolatrous and blasphemous for him to worship some other God. Or, could God sin? Again this seems absurd to think that God could act in such a way that would be contrary to his moral character. Christian theologians typically do not say that God can act contrary to his own nature. God necessarily acts in a way that is consistent with his own nature. He cannot act contrary to his nature.

Secondly, what about logical impossibilities? Can God do something that is logically impossible? For example, can God Bring it about that he exists and does not exist and never has existed? Can he make it true that Jesus came and died on the cross and did not come and die on the cross? These are logical contradictions. Could he make a logical contradiction come true? Could God make a round square, for example? Again, Christian theologians almost universally would say that God’s being all-powerful doesn’t mean that he can do things that are logically impossible. Though there have been exceptions – for example, the great philosopher Rene Descartes (who was a committed Christian philosopher) believed that God could do logically impossibilities and that the laws of logic and mathematics depend upon God’s will. God has willed the law of contradiction to be true, and he has willed certain other logically necessary truths. So ultimately these sorts of logical necessities are not rooted in God’s nature, but in his will. But Descartes stands here as a real outlier, a real maverick. By far and away it is virtually universal among Christian thinkers that God’s being omnipotent doesn’t mean that he can do logical impossibilities. These are not things at all. They are just contradictory combinations of words. There is no such “thing” as a round square that God is incapable of making. These are just logical contradictions verbally and therefore are not things that God’s power needs to encompass.

Thirdly, what about things that are logically possible but they are unactualizable? Are there things that are logically possible in themselves but they are incapable of being realized in reality? Incapable of being actualized – I call these unactualizable. For example, it seems logically possible that people could always choose to do the right thing – that they would never sin. That would mean that there is a logically possible world in which people never sin but always freely do the right thing. This would not be a robot world. It is not a marionette world where God is pulling the puppet strings and making these people always choose the right thing. It is just that in any moral situation in which you find yourself you have the ability to choose to do good or not to do good. You have the ability to choose evil or good, and you are not logically forced to do the wrong thing. It is logically possible for you to do the right thing. What if everybody always did the right thing? What if everybody always simply freely chose to obey God? Then you would have a world in which there would be no sin even though there is human freedom. So there must be a logically possible world like that. But does that mean that therefore God is capable of creating such a world? That doesn’t follow because it may be that given human freedom if God were to try to actualize such a world, the people would go wrong and would sin and therefore this world would not result.

You can think of it in this way. It is not simply up to God which world becomes actual. If people have freedom, then they co-actualize the world along with God. If God gives them freedom, then he doesn’t determine what they choose. He stands back, so to speak, and lets them make their choices in those moral situations in which they find themselves. What that implies is that there are logically possible worlds that are perfectly consistent in and of themselves but which God is incapable of creating. He is incapable of actualizing them. Why? The reason would be because the wrong subjunctive conditionals are true. It is logically possible that if Peter were in the circumstances he was in, he would not deny Christ. He would faithfully confess Christ. That is possible. But nevertheless it may be the case that if Peter were in these circumstances he would freely deny Christ three times. So that logically possible world isn’t available to God to actualize. It is infeasible for him to actualize even though it is logically possible. I think you can already see this is very intimately related to the question of middle knowledge. On middle knowledge there is a very significant distinction between worlds which are possible and worlds which are feasible for God to actualize. It may be that there is a whole range of worlds that are logically possible – like a sinless world – but which God is incapable of creating because the creatures would in fact go wrong. Therefore, God (even though he is omnipotent) isn’t necessarily capable of actualizing just any logically possible state of affairs.

So it seems that there are these paradoxes of omnipotence that seem to impose limits upon the range of God’s power. How then should we understand God’s omnipotence? I think that we should say that these represent purely logical limits on the range ofGod’s power. Even his inability to actualize a logically possible world is a logical limit because it is logically impossible to make creatures freely do something. The source of the limitation is purely logic, and logic, I think, is based in the nature of God himself. It is a reflection of his own essence and nature that God acts in logically consistent ways.

Here is a rough definition of the range of God’s power that I think is usable. I have to say this can get very complicated when you read philosophical literature on this. But here is a simple way of putting it.

God can bring about any state of affairs which is logically possible for anyone to bring about in that situation.

If anyone in that situation would be capable of bringing about that state of affairs, then God must be capable of bringing about that state of affairs.

How would that apply to some of these exceptions that we talked about? No one could bring about the state of affairs of God’s acting contrary to his own nature. That is simply logically impossible. So no one has that power. Similarly, nobody would have the power to bring it about that a square circle exists or that a married bachelor exists. No one could bring about a state of affairs in which there is a stone too heavy for God to lift, for example. This is simply a logically incoherent state of affairs. Nobody could bring that about. Or no one in God’s situation could bring about these worlds that are logically possible in themselves but which are infeasible because of the subjunctive conditionals that happen to be true. Anybody in that situation will be confronted with the same limitations – the same counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.

So I think this gives a kind of rough and ready idea of divine omnipotence.

1. Power: there is no state of affairs that God is unable to bring about due to a lack of power.
2. Range God can bring about any state of affairs which is logically possible for anyone to bring about in that situation