by jimwalton » Sun Jun 03, 2018 4:28 pm
Omnipotence doesn’t mean there are no limits to what God can do (Mk. 6.5). It means God is able to do all things that are proper objects of his power (which does not include self-contradictory and absurd premises). It is no contradiction that God can realize whatever is possible, and that no number of actualized possibilities exhausts his power. God can realize whatever is possible. The omnipotence of God is all-sufficient power. He is able to overcome apparently insurmountable problems. He has complete power over nature, though often he lets nature take its course, because that’s what He created it to do. He has power over the course of history. He has the power to change human personality, but only as individuals allow. He has the power to conquer death and sin, and to save a human soul for eternity. He has power over the spiritual realm.
What all of this means is that God’s will is never frustrated. What he chooses to do, he accomplishes, for he has the ability to do it.
There are, however, certain qualifications of this all-powerful character of God. He cannot arbitrarily do anything whatsoever that we may conceive of.
- He can’t do what is logically absurd or contradictory (like make a square circle or a married bachelor, or a rock he cannot lift)
- He can’t act contrary to his nature. Self-contradiction is not possible.
- He cannot fail to do what he has promised
- The theology of omnipotence rejects the possibility of dualism
- He cannot interfere with the freedom of man. Otherwise we’re not free.
- He cannot change the past
- It is not violated by self-limitation on the part of God
- It does not imply the use of all the power of God
Another aspect of God's omnipotence is that he is free. Nothing in Scripture suggests that God's will is determined or bound by any external factors. God's decisions and actions are not determined by consideration of any factors outside himself, but are simply a matter of his own free choice.
Leibniz & Ross philosophically state omnipotence in what's called a "result" theory: theories that analyze omnipotence in terms of the results an omnipotent being would be able to bring about. These results are usually thought of as states of affairs or possible worlds: a way the world could be. A possible world is a maximally consistent state of affairs, a complete way the world could be. The simplest way to state it may be, "for any comprehensive way the world could be, an omnipotent being could bring it about that the world was that way." Ross formulated it as "Since every state of affairs must either obtain or not, and since two contradictory states of affairs cannot both obtain, an omnipotent being would have to will some maximal consistent set of contingent states of affairs, that is, some one possible world."
Your "paradox" is a contradictory state of affairs that is absurd (white blacks, square circles, married bachelors). Two contradictory states of affairs cannot both obtain, and it is no reflection on God that He can't be self-contradictory or act in self-contradictory affairs. You're trying to logically argue illogical things, and so your question itself is a contradiction. If you are trying to use illogic to press a logical point, you fail out of the starting gate.