![AverroesColor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/AverroesColor.jpg)
The omnipotence paradox is a family of
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
es that arise with some understandings of the term ''omnipotent''. The paradox arises, for example, if one assumes that an omnipotent being has no limits and is capable of realizing any outcome, even a
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
ally contradictory one such as creating a square circle.
Atheological arguments based on the omnipotence paradox are sometimes described as evidence for countering theism. Other possible resolutions to the paradox hinge on the definition of omnipotence applied and the nature of
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
regarding this application and whether omnipotence is directed toward God himself or outward toward his external surroundings.
The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least to the 10th century, when the
Saadia Gaon
Saʻadiah ben Yosef Gaon ( ar, سعيد بن يوسف الفيومي ''Saʻīd bin Yūsuf al-Fayyūmi''; he, סַעֲדְיָה בֶּן יוֹסֵף אַלְפַיּוּמִי גָּאוֹן ''Saʿăḏyāh ben Yōsēf al-Fayyūmī Gāʾōn''; ...
responded to the question of whether God's omnipotence extended to logical absurdities. It was later addressed by
Averroës
Ibn Rushd ( ar, ; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was an
Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psyc ...
Averroës
Ibn Rushd ( ar, ; full name in ; 14 April 112611 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes ( ), was an
Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psyc ...
, ''Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence)'' trans. Simon Van Den Bergh, Luzac & Company 1969, sections 529–536 and
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...
.
[ Aquinas, Thomas ]Summa Theologica
The ''Summa Theologiae'' or ''Summa Theologica'' (), often referred to simply as the ''Summa'', is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), a scholastic theologian and Doctor of the Church. It is a compendium of all of the main th ...
Book 1 Question 25 article 3 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum'' o ...
(before 532) has a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to "deny himself".
The best-known version of the omnipotence paradox is the so-called ''paradox of the stone'': "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?"
[Savage, C. Wade. "The Paradox of the Stone" ''Philosophical Review'', Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 74–79 ] This phrasing of the omnipotence paradox is vulnerable to objections based on the physical nature of
gravity
In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...
, such as how the
weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity.
Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar qua ...
of an object depends on what the local gravitational field is. Alternative statements of the paradox that do not involve such difficulties include "If given the axioms of Euclidean geometry, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?" and "Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?".
Overview
A common modern version of the omnipotence paradox is expressed in the question: "Can
n omnipotent beingcreate a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?" This question generates a dilemma. The being can either create a stone it cannot lift, or it cannot create a stone it cannot lift. If the being create a stone that it cannot lift, then it is not omnipotent because there is a weight threshold beyond its own power to lift. If the being create a stone it cannot lift, then there is something it cannot create, and is therefore not omnipotent. In either case, the being is not omnipotent.
A related issue is whether the concept of "logically possible" is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which omnipotence does not exist.
The dilemma of omnipotence is similar to another classic paradox—the
irresistible force paradox
The irresistible force paradox (also unstoppable force paradox or shield and spear paradox), is a classic paradox formulated as "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" The immovable object and the unstoppable force are ...
: "What would happen if an irresistible force were to meet an immovable object?" One response to this paradox is to disallow its formulation, by saying that if a force is irresistible, then by definition there is no immovable object; or conversely, if an immovable object exists, then by definition no force can be irresistible. Another response to this that the only way out of this paradox is if the irresistible force and immovable object never meet. However this does not hold up under scrutiny, because an object cannot in principle be immovable if a force exists that can in principle move it, regardless of whether the force and the object actually meet.
Types of omnipotence
Augustine of Hippo in his
City of God writes "
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills" and thus proposes the definition that "Y is omnipotent" means "If Y wishes to do X then Y can and does do X".
The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. An essentially omnipotent being is an entity that is necessarily omnipotent. In contrast, an accidentally omnipotent being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a temporary period of time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be applied to each type of being differently.
[Hoffman, Joshua, Rosenkrantz, Gary]
"Omnipotence"
''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2002 Edition)''. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (Accessed on 19 April 2006)
In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a
false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence.
[ Haeckel, Ernst. ''The Riddle of the Universe.'' Harper and Brothers, 1900.] Some modern approaches to the problem have involved
semantic debates over whether language—and therefore philosophy—can meaningfully address the concept of omnipotence itself.
Proposed answers
Omnipotence does not mean breaking the laws of logic
A common response from Christian philosophers, such as
Norman Geisler
Norman Leo Geisler (July 21, 1932 – July 1, 2019) was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries ( Veritas International University and Southern Evange ...
or
William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist ...
, is that the paradox assumes a wrong definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything ''at all'' but, rather, that he can do ''anything that is possible according to his nature.'' The distinction is important. God cannot perform logical absurdities; he cannot, for instance, make 1+1=3. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible supports this, they assert, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, which says it is "impossible for God to lie."
A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes.
[Mavrodes, George.]
Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence
first published 1963 now in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 131–34 Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation on a being's omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a "task" is termed by him a "pseudo-task" as it is self-contradictory and inherently nonsense.
Harry Frankfurt
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002. Frankfurt has also taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and ...
—following from Descartes—has responded to this solution with a proposal of his own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said stone
For why should God not be able to perform the task in question? To be sure, it is a task—the task of lifting a stone which He cannot lift—whose description is self-contradictory. But if God is supposed capable of performing one task whose description is self-contradictory—that of creating the problematic stone in the first place—why should He not be supposed capable of performing another—that of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in performing two logically impossible tasks than there is in performing one?[Frankfurt, Harry. "The Logic of Omnipotence" first published in 1964 in '']Philosophical Review
''The Philosophical Review'' is a quarterly journal of philosophy edited by the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University and published by Duke University Press (since September 2006).
Overview
The journal publishes original ...
'' and now in ''Necessity, Volition, and Love''. Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer.
Cambridge University Pre ...
November 28, 1998 pp.1–2
If a being is ''accidentally omnipotent'', it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone it cannot lift, thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power.
On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.
[Gore, Charles, "A Kenotic Theory of Incarnation" first published 1891, in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 165–68]
If a being is ''essentially omnipotent'', then it can also resolve the paradox. The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent, and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further, the omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible—just like the accidentally omnipotent—and have no limitations except the inability to become non-omnipotent. The omnipotent being cannot create a stone it cannot lift.
The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power is equal to itself—thus, removing the omnipotence, for there can only be one omnipotent being, but it nevertheless retains its omnipotence. This solution works even with definition 2—as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings can do something (to themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself). This was essentially the position
Augustine of Hippo took in his ''
The City of God
''On the City of God Against the Pagans'' ( la, De civitate Dei contra paganos), often called ''The City of God'', is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD. The book was in response ...
'':
For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.
Thus Augustine argued that God could not do anything or create any situation that would, in effect, make God not God.
In a 1955 article in the philosophy journal ''Mind'',
J. L. Mackie tried to resolve the paradox by distinguishing between first-order omnipotence (unlimited power to act) and second-order omnipotence (unlimited power to determine what powers to act things shall have). An omnipotent being with both first and second-order omnipotence at a particular time might restrict its own power to act and, henceforth, cease to be omnipotent in either sense. There has been considerable philosophical dispute since Mackie, as to the best way to formulate the paradox of omnipotence in formal logic.
[The Power of God: Readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978. Keene and Mayo disagree p. 145, Savage provides 3 formalizations p. 138–41, Cowan has a different strategy p. 147, and Walton uses a whole separate strategy p. 153–63]
;God and logic
:
Although the most common translation of the noun "Logos" is "Word" other translations have been used. Gordon Clark (1902–1985), a Calvinist theologian and expert on pre-Socratic philosophy, famously translated Logos as "Logic": "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God." He meant to imply by this translation that the laws of logic were derived from God and formed part of Creation, and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the Christian world view.
God obeys the laws of logic because God is eternally logical in the same way that God does not perform evil actions because God is eternally good. So, God, by nature logical and unable to violate the laws of logic, cannot make a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it because that would violate the law of non contradiction by creating an immovable object and an unstoppable force.
This raises the question, similar to the
Euthyphro Dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue ''Euthyphro'', in which Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious ( τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" ( 10a)
Although it ...
, of where this law of logic, which God is bound to obey, comes from. According to these theologians (
Norman Geisler
Norman Leo Geisler (July 21, 1932 – July 1, 2019) was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries ( Veritas International University and Southern Evange ...
and
William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist ...
), this law is not a law above God that he assents to but, rather, logic is an eternal part of God's nature, like his
omniscience
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
or
omnibenevolence
Omnibenevolence (from Latin ''omni-'' meaning "all", ''bene-'' meaning "good" and ''volens'' meaning "willing") is defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "unlimited or infinite benevolence". Some philosophers have argued that it is impos ...
.
Paradox is meaningless: the question is sophistry
Another common response is that since God is supposedly omnipotent, the phrase "could not lift" does not make sense and the paradox is meaningless.
[The Problem of Pain, Clive Staples Lewis, 1944 MacMillan] This may mean that the complexity involved in rightly understanding omnipotence—contra all the logical details involved in misunderstanding it—is a function of the fact that omnipotence, like infinity, is perceived at all by contrasting reference to those complex and variable things, ''which it is not''. An alternative meaning, however, is that a non-corporeal God cannot lift anything, but can raise it (a linguistic pedantry)—or to use the beliefs of Hindus (that there is one God, who can be manifest as several different beings) that whilst it is possible for God to do all things, it is not possible for all his incarnations to do them. As such, God could create a stone so heavy that, in one incarnation, he could not lift it, yet could do something that an incarnation that ''could'' lift the stone could not.
The lifting a rock paradox (''Can God lift a stone larger than he can carry?'') uses human characteristics to cover up the main skeletal structure of the question. With these assumptions made, two arguments can stem from it:
#Lifting covers up the definition of translation, which means moving something from one point in space to another. With this in mind, the real question would be, "''Can God move a rock from one location in space to another that is larger than possible?''" For the rock to be unable to move from one space to another, it would have to be larger than space itself. However, it is impossible for a rock to be larger than space, as space always adjusts itself to cover the space of the rock. If the supposed rock was out of space-time dimension, then the question would not make sense—because it would be impossible to move an object from one location in space to another if there is no space to begin with, meaning the faulting is with the logic of the question and not God's capabilities.
#The words, "Lift a Stone" are used instead to substitute capability. With this in mind, essentially the question is asking if God is incapable, so the real question would be, "''Is God capable of being incapable?''" If God is capable of being incapable, it means that He is incapable, because He has the potential to not be able to do something. Conversely, if God is incapable of being incapable, then the two inabilities cancel each other out, making God have the capability to do something.
The act of killing oneself is not applicable to an omnipotent being, since, despite that such an act does involve some power, it also involves a ''lack'' of power: the human person who can kill himself is already not indestructible, and, in fact, every agent constituting his environment is more powerful in some ways than himself. In other words, all non-omnipotent agents are concretely ''synthetic'': constructed as contingencies of other, smaller, agents, meaning that they, unlike an omnipotent agent, logically can exist not only in multiple instantiation (by being constructed out of the more basic agents they are made of), but are each bound to a different location in space contra transcendent
omnipresence.
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...
argues that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing "a square circle"; that it is not logically coherent in terms of power to think that omnipotence includes the power to do the logically impossible. So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a square circle?" The logical contradiction here being God's simultaneous ability and disability in lifting the rock: the statement "God can lift this rock" must have a truth value of either true or false, it cannot possess both. This is justified by observing that for the omnipotent agent to create such a stone, it must already be more powerful than itself: such a stone is too heavy for the omnipotent agent to lift, but the omnipotent agent already can create such a stone; If an omnipotent agent already is more powerful than itself, then it already is just that powerful. This means that its power to create a stone that is too heavy for it to lift is identical to its power to lift that very stone. While this does not quite make complete sense, Lewis wished to stress its implicit point: that even within the attempt to prove that the concept of omnipotence is immediately incoherent, one admits that it is immediately coherent, and that the only difference is that this attempt is forced to admit this despite that the attempt is constituted by a perfectly irrational route to its own unwilling end, with a perfectly irrational set of 'things' included in that end.
In other words, the 'limit' on what omnipotence 'can' do is not a ''limit'' on its actual agency, but an ''epistemological boundary'' without which omnipotence could not be ''identified'' (paradoxically or otherwise) in the first place. In fact, this process is merely a fancier form of the classic
Liar Paradox
In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth ...
: If I say, "I am a liar", then how can it be true if I am telling the truth therewith, and, if I am telling the truth therewith, then how can I be a liar? So, to think that omnipotence is an ''epistemological'' paradox is like failing to recognize that, when taking the statement, 'I am a liar' self-referentially, the statement is reduced to an actual failure to lie. In other words, if one maintains the supposedly 'initial' position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if one concludes from this position that omnipotence is epistemologically incoherent, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own 'initial' position is incoherent. Therefore, the question (and therefore the perceived paradox) is meaningless. Nonsense does not suddenly acquire sense and meaning with the addition of the two words, "God can" before it.
Lewis additionally said that, "Unless something is self-evident, nothing can be proved." This implies for the debate on omnipotence that, ''as in matter, so in the human understanding of truth: it takes no true insight to destroy a perfectly integrated structure, and the effort to destroy has greater effect than an equal effort to build; so, a man is thought a fool who assumes its integrity, and thought an abomination who argues for it. It is easier to teach a fish to swim in outer space than to convince a room full of ignorant fools why it cannot be done.''
Paradox assumes the rock has already been created
In 1999, Matthew Whittle asserts that it shouldn't be outside the scope of powers for an omnipotent being to make itself non-omnipotent, so indeed making a rock too heavy to lift is possible for God. The follow on question "Then can he lift it?" assumes that the rock has already been created, so the correct answer would be "Assuming he makes the rock, no." And if asked "Is God thus not all powerful?", the correct answer would be "God is indeed all powerful until such time as the rock is created." The "Paradox" then is not really a paradox.
Language and omnipotence
The philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...
is frequently interpreted as arguing that language is not up to the task of describing the kind of power an omnipotent being would have. In his ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define th ...
'', he stays generally within the realm of
logical positivism until claim 6.4—but at 6.41 and following, he argues that
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
and several other issues are "transcendental" subjects that we cannot examine with language. Wittgenstein also mentions the will, life after death, and God—arguing that, "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words."
Wittgenstein's work expresses the omnipotence paradox as a problem in
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comp ...
—the study of how we give symbols meaning. (The retort "That's only semantics," is a way of saying that a statement only concerns the definitions of words, instead of anything important in the physical world.) According to the ''Tractatus,'' then, even attempting to formulate the omnipotence paradox is futile, since language cannot refer to the entities the paradox considers. The final proposition of the ''Tractatus'' gives Wittgenstein's dictum for these circumstances: "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence".
Wittgenstein's approach to these problems is influential among other 20th century religious thinkers such as
D. Z. Phillips.
[ D. Z. Phillips "Philosophy, Theology and the Reality of God" in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. William Rowe and William Wainwright eds. 3rd ed. 1998 Oxford University Press] In his later years, however, Wittgenstein wrote works often interpreted as conflicting with his positions in the ''Tractatus'',
[Hacker, P.M.S. Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy. 1996 Blackwell] and indeed the later Wittgenstein is mainly seen as the leading critic of the early Wittgenstein.
Other versions of the paradox
In the 6th century,
Pseudo-Dionysius
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum' ...
claims that a version of the omnipotence paradox constituted the dispute between
Paul the Apostle and
Elymas the Magician mentioned in
Acts 13
Acts 13 is the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Pisidia. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early ...
:8, but it is phrased in terms of a debate as to whether God can "deny himself" a'la 2 Tim 2:13.
Pseudo-Dionysius
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the ''Corpus Areopagiticum' ...
, "Divine Names" 893B in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. trans Colm Luibheid Paulist Press. 1987. In the 11th century,
Anselm of Canterbury argues that there are many things that God cannot do, but that nonetheless he counts as omnipotent.
[Anselm of Canterbury Proslogion Chap. VII, in The Power of God: readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Linwood Urban and Douglass Walton eds. Oxford University Press 1978 pp. 35–36]
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wit ...
advanced a version of the omnipotence paradox by asking whether God could create a triangle with internal angles that did not add up to 180 degrees. As Aquinas put it in ''
Summa contra Gentiles
The ''Summa contra Gentiles'' (also known as ', "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers") is one of the best-known treatises by St Thomas Aquinas, written as four books between 1259 and 1265.
Whereas the '' ...
'':
This can be done on a sphere, and not on a flat surface. The later invention of
non-Euclidean geometry
In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean g ...
does not resolve this question; for one might as well ask, "If given the axioms of
Riemannian geometry
Riemannian geometry is the branch of differential geometry that studies Riemannian manifolds, smooth manifolds with a ''Riemannian metric'', i.e. with an inner product on the tangent space at each point that varies smoothly from point to point ...
, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles ''do not'' add up to ''more'' than 180 degrees?" In either case, the real question is whether an omnipotent being would have the ability to evade consequences that follow logically from a system of axioms that the being created.
A version of the paradox can also be seen in non-theological contexts. A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or
parliamentary sovereignty
Parliamentary sovereignty, also called parliamentary supremacy or legislative supremacy, is a concept in the constitutional law of some parliamentary democracies. It holds that the legislative body has absolute sovereignty and is supreme over all ...
, which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal power, and in particular such an institution's ability to regulate itself.
[Suber, P. (1990]
''The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change''
. Peter Lang Publishing
In a sense, the classic statement of the omnipotence paradox — a rock so heavy that its omnipotent creator cannot lift it — is grounded in
Aristotelian science. After all, if we consider the stone's position relative to the sun the planet orbits around, one could hold that the stone is ''constantly'' lifted—strained though that interpretation would be in the present context. Modern physics indicates that the choice of phrasing about lifting stones should relate to acceleration; however, this does not in itself of course invalidate the fundamental concept of the generalized omnipotence paradox. However, one could easily modify the classic statement as follows: "An omnipotent being creates a
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...
that follows the laws of Aristotelian physics. Within this universe, can the omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that the being cannot lift it?"
Ethan Allen's ''Reason'' addresses the topics of
original sin,
theodicy
Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of ...
and several others in classic
Enlightenment fashion.
[ Allen, Ethan]
''Reason: The Only Oracle of Man.''
J.P. Mendum, Cornill; 1854. Originally published 1784. (Accessed on 19 April 2006) In Chapter 3, section IV, he notes that "omnipotence itself" could not exempt animal life from mortality, since change and death are defining attributes of such life. He argues, "the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature." Labeled by his friends a
Deist
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...
, Allen accepted the notion of a divine being, though throughout ''Reason'' he argues that even a divine being must be circumscribed by logic.
In ''
Principles of Philosophy
''Principles of Philosophy'' ( la, Principia Philosophiae) is a book by René Descartes. In essence, it is a synthesis of the '' Discourse on Method'' and '' Meditations on First Philosophy''.Guy Durandin, ''Les Principes de la Philosophie. Int ...
,''
Descartes tried refuting the existence of atoms with a variation of this argument, claiming God could not create things so indivisible that he could not divide them.
See also
*
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
*
Problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encycl ...
*
List of paradoxes
This list includes well known paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their ...
*
Fallacies of atheism
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was intr ...
Notes
References
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Allen, Ethan''Reason: The Only Oracle of Man.'' J.P. Mendum, Cornill; 1854. Originally published 1784. (Accessed on 19 April 2006)
*Augustine
The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. (Accessed on 26 September 2006)
*
Burke, James. ''
The Day the Universe Changed
''The Day the Universe Changed: A Personal View by James Burke'' is a British documentary television series written and presented by science historian James Burke, originally broadcast on BBC1 from 19 March until 21 May 1985 by the BBC. The ser ...
.'' Little, Brown; 1995 (paperback edition). .
*
Gleick, James
James Gleick (; born August 1, 1954) is an American author and historian of science whose work has chronicled the cultural impact of modern technology. Recognized for his writing about complex subjects through the techniques of narrative nonficti ...
. ''Genius.'' Pantheon, 1992. .
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Haeckel, Ernst. ''The Riddle of the Universe.'' Harper and Brothers, 1900.
*Hoffman, Joshua, Rosenkrantz, Gary
"Omnipotence"''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition)''. Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (Accessed on 10 March 2020)
*
Mackie, J. L., "Evil and Omnipotence." ''Mind'' LXIV, No, 254 (April 1955).
*Wierenga, Edward
"Omnipotence" ''The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes'' Cornell University Press, 1989. (Accessed on 19 April 2006)
*
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. ''
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' (widely abbreviated and cited as TLP) is a book-length philosophical work by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein which deals with the relationship between language and reality and aims to define th ...
.'
Available onlinevia
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...
. Accessed 19 April 2006.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Omnipotence Paradox
Arguments against the existence of God
Philosophical paradoxes
Philosophy of religion
Scholasticism
Theology
Atheism