Question Referring to questions 2715, 2740 and 2746 on this site. The respondents to the mentioned questions (Allen Stairs, Peter Smith and Nicholas D. Smith) seem to concur that an omnipotent God need not be able to perform a dialectical task. This idea seems to presuppose that God is subject to (under) the order of the universe and that there is little or no ontological distance between God and creation. The problem with this view is that it seems to make God determined by his own law. If we should increase the ontological distance between God and creation, whereby placing God above (not subject to) his law, it would also be problematic because it seems to make God whimsical and untrustworthy. My question: Is it correct to think that issues about the relationship between God, law and creation (and the normative implications thereof) is what underlies the questions of the type “Can God make a rock that is too heavy to pick up”? Greetings, from South Africa

Accepted:
July 13, 2009

Comments

There is a long theistic tradition in philosophy that agrees that being ‘omnipotent’ and ‘being able to do absolutely anything’ are two very different concepts. Calling God ‘omnipotent’ only means that God has an infinite amount of power… however, they may be things God can’t do for reasons other than a lack of power.

For example, Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential theists in history lists a large number of things that ‘God can’t do’. [In my philosophy of religion course I call this lecture ’20 things you can do that God himself couldn’t do’]. For example, Aquinas thinks God can’t change because he is already perfect… therefore he can’t become more perfect and he wouldn’t choose to become less perfect. God can’t forget or become tired. God can’t be sorry (because he never does anything wrong to be sorry for). God can’t do wrong… etc. [you can read about this in Summa Contra Gentiles I by Aquinas]

Now your interest seems to focus on the question ‘can God break the rules of logic?’ Most philosophically minded theists have said that God can’t break the rules of logic, but this limitation has nothing to do with God lacking power. A minority of philosophically minded theists think that God can break the rules of logic. However, if this is true, there’s nothing more to be said about questions like ‘can God make a 4-sided triangle?’ or ‘can God make a rock so big that an omnipotent being couldn’t lift it?’

If God can break the rules of logic, then God can do these things, but since human rationality is limited by the laws of logic, we can’t understand how God is capable of these things or how God’s ability to make a rock so big that on omnipotent being like himself couldn’t lift it is compatible with his own omnipotence…. Of course, that’s not a problem if you believe God is capable of breaking the laws of logic, it would only point to a limitedness in human ability to understand God.

In any case, most traditional theists who write philosophy believe that God is limited by the laws of logic… probably in part because there wouldn’t be much to discuss if they assumed otherwise.