Today I’d like to open up the issue of divine omnipotence. Unreflective thinking would suggest that there is no real issue here since omnipotence simply means an ability to do anything, or that there is nothing that an omnipotent being cannot do. Whilst these understandings are somewhat correct, there is a deep fissure between defenders of divine omnipotence to the effect that whilst both accept that there is nothing that an omnipotent being cannot do, they differ as to their account of how this is the case.
On one account, attributable to Descartes, when we hold that there is nothing an omnipotent being cannot do, we hold that an omnipotent being can do anything it wants. Thus, if such a being wanted to create a universe within which 2+2=5, then such a being could have done so. On this account, possibility is located in the will of a divine being.
On the other hand there is the position attributable to Aquinas. Assuming that possibility is a necessary though not sufficient condition for actuality, Aquinas holds that whatever an omnipotent being can do must in principle be possible. Now, Thomas holds that what is possible is what does not admit of a contradiction, and what is impossible is precisely what admits of a contradiction. Thus, what is impossible is incapable of being actual, and therefore precisely nothing. So, for Aquinas when we say that there is nothing that an omnipotent being cannot do, the ‘nothing’ here is understood precisely as what is impossible. Consequently, on Aquinas’s account, omnipotence is an ability to bring about any possibility, where a possibility is understood as what does not involve a contradiction.
On Aquinas’s account then, there are imaginable states of affairs such as going back in time and changing a past that has already been, bringing about 2+2=5, and arguably creating a universe with no evil therein, which whilst imaginable are not possible and therefore not open to divine omnipotence. On the other hand, on the Cartesian account of divine omnipotence, any imaginable state of affairs is open to such power since an omnipotent being can bring about anything it wants.
What do you think?
What makes the very conception of divine omnipotence so difficult to get an intellectual handle on is that we have no contemporary, direct example to use as a model... until now!
ReplyDeleteProof of God, in the theological sense, is of course a misnomer, a philosophical contrivance to avoid accepting our ignorance of such a reality. As a humanity, we have all been conditioned or indoctrinated, for all of history by 'theological' exegesis, particularly by those with their own religious claims and agendas, to accept that a literal proof of God is not possible for faith. And thus all discussion of morality and apologists 'theodicy' is contained within this self limiting intellectual paradigm and bubble of presumption, especially evident in the frictions between science and religion. It would now appear that all sides squabbling over the God question, religious, atheist and history itself have it wrong! That bubble could now burst at any time!
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