1. Divine Omnipotence: Theological Issues
Prof. Dr. Klaus von Stosch

2. Outline
1. Omnipotence and logical issues 2. God‘s Greaterness as a way of defining Omnipotence 3. Almightiness as love 4. Biblical evidence for this understanding

3. 1. Omnipotence and logical issues
Is God able to play soccer without using his feet?
If you are saying that God can create entities which are logically impossible, the talk of God becomes arbitrary.

4. Standard Definition
An omnipotent being can fulfill all logically possible tasks.
It has all logically possible capacities.
„Making a stone one cannot lift is a possible universal task.“ (J.H. Sobel, Logic and Theism, 353)

5. Omnipotence Paradox
"Can [an omnipotent being] create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?"

6. Omnipotence Paradox
If the answer is ‘yes’, i.e. the being can create a stone that it cannot lift, something exists which God is not able to lift. Thus, God is not omnipotent.
If the answer is ‘no’, i.e. the being cannot create a stone which it cannot lift, there is a task which God cannot fulfil. Thus, God is not omnipotent.

7. Standard Rejection
„The dilemma fails because it consists of asking whether God can do a self-contradictory thing.“ (G.I. Mavrodes, Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence, 221)
It is logically impossible to ask from an omnipotent being to create a stone it cannot lift if omnipotence means to be able to lift everything.

8. Standard rejection
Demanding from a being which can fulfil any task not to be able to fulfil a task is demanding a contradiction.
It is logically impossible for God to create this stone. But he can create a stone that he does not lift.

9. Discussion
It is a logically possible capacity to create a stone one cannot lift.
If an omnipotent being has all logically possible capacities, it has to be able to create the stone.
To say that the definition of omnipotence makes it impossible to fulfill the task, shows that this definition is disputable (Lange 112).

10. Discussion
Possibility of the inconsistency of the standard definition of omnipotence has to be considered.
Not:
But:
Omnipotence
To be able to create a stone one cannot lift.
Omnipotence
To be able to lift all stones that one has created.
To be able to create a stone one cannot lift.

11. Further problems of the standard definition
Is God able to swim, to eat or to cough?
Is God able to commit crimes/ sins?
Thus, properties like immaterialness and impaccability as arguments against omnipotence as having all logically possible capacities.
Coherence of all great-making properties as part of the definition

12. 2. God‘s Greaterness as a Way of Defining Omnipotence
Definition of God in St. Anselm‘s Proslogion: God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived (id quo maius cogitari non potest =IQM).
As God is IQM, God is greater than can be conceived
(Allahu akbar/ Deus semper maior).

13. Greater than can be conceived?
Inconsistent? Thinkable and not thinkable?
No, if this sort of „greaterness“ is a property of IQM.
No contradiction, if IQM is understood as a rule for establishing notions of God.
On the higher level (step) the truth of the lower level is integrated.

14. Searching for alternative definitions
Omnipotence as a power, than which no greater power can be conceived.
Omnipotence as greatest coherent unification of great-making-capacities (Andrea Lange)
Great-making-capacities as those capacities it is better/greater to possess than not to posssess.

15. Omnipotence and free will
Power through coercion
Power through Love
God is able to create beings he does not control.
God is able to control and to determine everything.
Free will is possible
God has the power of winning those beings as free agents for His good willing through the power of love.
God only has the capacity of creating beings he does not control.
God determines and controls everything.
No free will is possible
No understanding of the language of love

16. The need of moral perfection
Properties as impeccability as a precondition for exercising power through persuasion/ invitation
Why surrender the own life to a monster? (Lange 271)
Only love can lead to complete surrender.

17. Omnipotence needs free will and love
„Persuasion is the means of exercising power on the powerful.“ (J.B. Cobb, God and the world, 89f.)
But what about the limits of persuasion?
„We fail to see why there are not many situations in which a certain amount of coercive power is morally required.“ (P.H. Hare/ E.H. Madden, Evil and persuasive power, 45)

18. Freedom as the Law of Love
Love cannot be coerced

19. Freedom as the Law of Love
Relationship between God and Man as a relationship of lovers/ of loving unity which respects differences and individuality.
Love needs freedom. Even God has to respect our freedom if it is love what he wants.
God shows His power in the way of inviting, attracting and calling.

20. Open theism and process theology
Free will theism
Process theology
Divine action through influencing, persuading, loving
Free choice not to use coercive power, but capacity to use it
Apocalyptic power and guarantee of good end
It makes sense to moan about evil.
Divine action through influencing, persuading, loving
No metaphysical possibility of coercion
Open end
Evil is beyond God‘s capacities. Petitionary prayer does not really make sense.

21. 3. Almightiness as love
Omnipotence has to be defined using the notion of love. Love is the property of all properties of God.
Love wants to show itself and love wants to celebrate difference.
It is better not to talk of an omnipotent, but of an almighty being (P.T. Geach, Omnipotence, 7-9)

22. No almightiness without love

23. No almightiness with immutability
K. Ward, Divine action, 130f.: „This is the heart of the theistic contention: that God changes his particular purposes in response to what happens in the world, and therefore that there are Divine causal influences not already set up in the act of creation, which govern how the world goes. God’s purpose is not one and unchanging in all respects, whatever happens. It is constantly redefined in response to events in the world, so it is particular and responsive, not wholly general and unchanged by whatever happens.“

24. Almightiness as love
„Göttliche Allmacht und göttliche Liebe sind … weder im Verhältnis der Subordination noch auch nur der Dialektik aufeinander bezogen. Gottes Allmacht ist vielmehr als die Macht seiner Liebe zu verstehen. Nur die Liebe ist allmächtig.“ (E. Jüngel, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 26)

25. Learning from Kierkegaard
God is almighty only if he creates something which he does not control
Quotation in KvS, Theodizee, 47sq.

26. Ladder of perfection
Love
Set beings free
Omnipotence
Power
Weakness

27. 4. Biblical Evidence

28. Parable of the lost sheep

29. Biblical notion of omnipotence
El-Schaddai/ אל שדי, also means being merciful, saving, blessing
Translation in LXX as Pantokrator/ Παντοκράτωρ: κράνειν means having power, but also to save or to preserve
Translation in vulgata as omnipotens which means in the beginning being powerful in everything

30. Love as property of all properties of God