Is God omnipotent?
A flat-out contradiction occurs if an omnipotent god reacts to humans with anger, pleasure, or love (Exodus 4:14, Deuteronomy 26:18, and John 3:16), which he seemingly must do if he has a personal relationship with humans. If God is emotionally affected by humans (or by anything else), then he is under some external influence (i.e., he lacks impassibility) and is therefore not omnipotent.
Omnipotence, because it implies not being subject to any external cause, is likewise incompatible with sentience. All sentient beings are subject to causation. To be sentient—to see or hear, for instance—is to be causally influenced by the physical world.
You may presume, notwithstanding biblical statements to the contrary (see above), that God is quite different structurally from humans and that he can therefore see, hear, taste, and touch through mysterious supernatural means. If your thoughts incline in this direction, then I challenge you to intelligibly explain how a being can see photons of light without causally interacting with those photons, whether through natural causation or supernatural causation.
You may reply that how God interacts with the physical realm is a mystery. Fine. Invoking mystery is perfectly legitimate. After all, we often believe in the existence of things we don’t fully understand. We can’t dismiss something merely because it’s mysterious. Everything is mysterious if we examine it closely enough.
But my point has nothing to do with the mysterious causal relationship between God and nature. My point is that a being whose senses causally react to the physical realm without being causally reactive to the physical realm is contradictory. It doesn’t matter whether the causation is natural or supernatural, or whether it’s understood or mysterious. Any causal relationship refutes divine impassibility and therefore omnipotence. Belief in an omnipotent sentient god is consequently irrational.
Most religious philosophers strive to avoid irrational beliefs. Their solution is to adopt a less superlative definition of omnipotence than the one I have been using. They stipulate, for instance, that when God interacts with the world, he submits himself to causation, and that he is subject to the laws of (1) identity, (2) the excluded middle, and (3) noncontradiction (chapter 5). They further stipulate that he can’t do the impossible, such as traveling back in time to sterilize your grandmother, thereby preventing your existence.
This puts philosophers in opposition to lay Christians who say omnipotence means “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26 and Mark 10:27, KJV). Given the biblical text, and given that the prefix omni means “all,” lay Christians can defend their stance that omnipotence means “all-powerful.” Yet, they fail to see that belief in such a God is inherently irrational.
In contrast, the philosophers’ god, being constrained by logic, is less than fully omnipotent. He is what we might call logi-omnipotent.
Philosophers and theologians who, explicitly or implicitly, endorse logi-omnipotence in their philosophical papers still crow in their lectures to the general public that “God can do anything.”[1]+ Alvin Plantinga is notorious for doing this. Richard Swinburne does it. Many do it. They’re not merely simplifying their language; they are alternating between specific tendentious words. For clarity, I will stick to the more precise terms full omnipotence and logi-omnipotence.
Proposing, as philosophers commonly do, that God is subject to the laws of logic (i.e., that he is logi-omnipotent) raises a question: Where do the laws of logic come from if they constrain even God?
Some philosophers, like Dean Rickles, say logic is necessary, end of discussion. But most theologians deny that logic can exist independently of God, much less that logic has influence over God. They propose that logic comes from God’s nature. Unfortunately, saying “logic comes from God’s nature” is like saying “2 + 2 = 4 owing to the essence of the Enchanted Emu.” It explains nothing. The suggestion that the law of identity originates in God’s nature is especially unpersuasive given that the law of identity is a prerequisite to having a nature.
Let’s set aside questions about the origins of logic. Let’s consider how logi-omnipotence can help solve tricky theological conundrums. For example, full omnipotence implies the power to do anything, including the power to know everything. Omnipotence entails omniscience. Does it follow that God must know what it’s like to be separated from God? Matthew 27:46 suggests that is the case: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (ESV).
Can God turn off his omniscience? Matthew 24:36 hints as much: “But concerning that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (ESV). This admission by Jesus of his ignorance indicates that he assumed a weakened state.[2]+ This voluntarily weakened state is specified in part by the doctrine of kenosis alluded to in Hebrews 2:7, which says that Jesus was made “lower than the angels” “for a little while” (ESV) and in Philippians 2:7: “[God] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (ESV).
Suppose a skeptic said, “According to Titus 1:2, Proverbs 30:5, Numbers 23:19, and Hebrews 6:18, God doesn’t and can’t lie. If God can’t lie, then he is not fully omnipotent. Alternatively, if he can lie, as indicated by 1 Kings 22:23, Ezekiel 14:9-10, 2 Chronicles 18:22, Jeremiah 4:10, Jeremiah 20:7, and 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, that implies that God’s moral standards cannot prevent him from lying. So, can he or can’t he lie?”
An apologist might reply that a logi-omnipotent god, if omni-benevolent, cannot commit a moral infraction. This does not resolve the biblical contradictions, but it plausibly explains why God cannot lie, at least when doing so would constitute a moral infraction.
Our hypothetical skeptic might ask, “Does God know how it feels to be consumed by lust? If not, is he truly all-knowing?” Again, logi-omnipotence comes to the rescue. It is logically contradictory for a sin-free god to sin. So, if lust is a sin, God cannot partake in it.
The skeptic may ask, “Can God commit suicide?” The theologian shakes his head. “No. God is immortal. Furthermore, suicide is a sin, and God cannot sin.” The theologian’s definition of omnipotence is restricted not only by the rules of logic, but also by other aspects of God’s nature, such as his immortality. God is thus sub-logi-omnipotent.
Logi-omnipotence alone can’t fix the problem posed by Adam’s provoking of God’s wrath. A god whose emotional states are influenced by humans is not a logical necessity. A god thus manipulated isn’t merely logi-omnipotent. He is sub-logi-omnipotent.
Theologians, resigned to the need to give up full omnipotence but resistant to giving up the illustrious title “omnipotent,” summarily redefine omnipotence as the capacity for one to perform precisely those actions consistent with one’s nature. By that definition, you and a dry-roasted salted peanut are both omnipotent because each of you can do anything within your respective natures. No matter what limitations are imposed on God’s powers, he is guaranteed to be labeled by his mendacious marketers as omnipotent.
Perhaps you have heard the question, “Is God powerful enough to make a rock too heavy for him to lift?” This question expresses a paradox that dates back at least to Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), also known as Averroës. The rock question reveals the logical absurdity inherent in the concept of full omnipotence. An apologist might respond to the rock question as follows:
Can God create a rock too heavy for him to lift? The question is poorly conceived. God can do anything. There is no limit on either the weight of rocks God can create or on the weight of rocks he can lift. The “too heavy” modifier doesn’t apply to any rock from the perspective of an omnipotent god. The only thing this question reveals is that an omnipotent god can fail at being a limited rock-maker or limited rock-lifter. Failing at being limited really is not a failure in any meaningful sense. The rock question arises from a miscomprehension of the word omnipotence. The person who poses the rock question simply needs to consult a good dictionary to look up the word omnipotence.
If a fully omnipotent god successfully made a rock too heavy for him to lift, and then proceeded to lift that rock, this would be a logical contradiction. That said, a fully omnipotent god is not constrained by contradictions. He can do the impossible. “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26, KJV).
I’m not saying that a god who can do the impossible makes sense to me. It strikes me as rubbish. My point is that it’s a flat-out contradiction for an apologist to say God can do anything and to simultaneously say God cannot do the impossible. Only a logi-omnipotent god must abide by the laws of logic, in this case the law of noncontradiction. The capacity to accommodate logical contradictions is implicit in the concept of full omnipotence.[3]+
Observe that the apologetic response to the rock question above embraces logi-omnipotence but still calls it omnipotence. Like C. S. Lewis, most religious philosophers embrace sub-logi-omnipotence yet label it as omnipotence. This is not a petty verbal quibble. The avoidance of distinct terms hampers clear thinking and thereby shields religious orthodoxy from critical analysis.
[1] Religious philosophers often avoid explicitly endorsing logi-omnipotence. They persist in calling God omnipotent and saying that he can do anything. They know their views of God differ greatly from the views of God held by most believers, yet they tactfully elide those differences. This isn’t only a modern phenomenon. The medieval Catholic Church promoted the notion of “mental reservation.” The word reservation might suggest hesitation or reluctance, but that’s not what they meant by the word. They meant reserving information from full disclosure. This is known in common parlance as a lie of omission.
[2] And that “the Son” is not the same being as “the Father.”
[3] René Descartes, in his effort to disprove the existence of atoms, insisted that an omnipotent god could not create things so indivisible that he could not divide them. Descartes used the prevailing definition of atoms as indivisible, and he defined omnipotent as “able to do anything short of a logical contradiction.” According to classical logic, a state of affairs is deemed logically impossible if it entails a contradiction. Graham Priest says a contradictory state can be an actual state. But nearly all philosophers disagree. They think our actual world abides by classical logic. In a classical world, God can’t perform contradictory actions. If God is restricted in any possible world, he is not fully omnipotent. Thus, a fully omnipotent god is impossible.