Re: Omnipotence

More than once I’ve been confronted by a supposed contradiction within Christian doctrine. It often starts with the question, “So, you believe in an all-powerful God?” Quickly following my assertion, the next question comes, “Well, could this God make one and one equal to three?” Resigning that such a statement would be nonsensical, I’m met with this conclusion, “Then you don’t believe in an all-powerful God.”

To meet this challenge, I once employed an analogy. Supposing we had a house in which there were many rooms, and a key capable of unlocking any of these. Now, though this skeleton key fitted every lock in the house, it could not unlock a room that did not exist. To the point: ascribing omnipotence to God is not characterizing Him with nonexistent powers.

This objection to omnipotence always seemed rather supercilious, and is often brought forth with the air of some sort of killer argument. Yet, it more rightly belongs to the category of the intellectually lazy, a confusion of terms brought on either by credulity or arrogantly willful ignorance.

Again, C. S. Lewis puts it best:

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can.’ It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

~The Problem of Pain