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divine omnipotence
Nothing which implies contradiction falls under
the omnipotence of God.
thomas aquinas,
Summ. Theol., Ia q xxv, Art 4
‘If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures
perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be
able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not
happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or
both.’ This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form.
The possibility of answering it depends on showing that the
terms ‘good’ and ‘almighty’, and perhaps also the term
‘happy’, are equivocal: for it must be admitted from the
outset that if the popular meanings attached to these words
are the best, or the only possible, meanings, then the argument
is unanswerable. In this chapter I shall make some
comments on the idea of Omnipotence, and, in the following,
some on the idea of Goodness.
Omnipotence means ‘power to do all, or everything’.1
And we are told in Scripture that ‘with God all things are
possible’. It is common enough, in argument with an
unbeliever, to be told that God, if He existed and were
good, would do this or that; and then, if we point out that
the proposed action is impossible, to be met with the
retort ‘But I thought God was supposed to be able to do
anything’. This raises the whole question of impossibility
In ordinary usage the word impossible generally
implies a suppressed clause beginning with the word
unless. Thus it is impossible for me to see the street from
where I sit writing at this moment; that is, it is impossible
to see the street unless I go up to the top floor where I
shall be high enough to overlook the intervening building.
If I had broken my leg I should say ‘But it is impossible
to go up to the top floor’—meaning, however, that it
is impossible unless some friends turn up who will carry
me. Now let us advance to a different plane of impossibility,
by saying ‘It is, at any rate, impossible to see the street
so long as I remain where I am and the intervening building
remains where it is.’ Someone might add ‘unless the
nature of space, or of vision, were different from what it
is’. I do not know what the best philosophers and scientists
would say to this, but I should have to reply ‘I don’t
know whether space and vision could possibly have been
of such a nature as you suggest.’ Now it is clear that the
words could possibly here refer to some absolute kind of
possibility or impossibility which is different from the
divine omnipotence
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relative possibilities and impossibilities we have been
considering.