The Omnipotence of God
The Omnipotence of God
The Apostles' Creed opens with the confident words “I believe in God, the Father almighty.” Belief in an “almighty” or omnipotent God is widely seen as being a core, essential element of basic Christian faith. But what does it mean to speak of God being “omnipotent”? A commonsense approach to the matter defines omnipotence like this: if God is omnipotent then God can do anything. Of course, God cannot make a square circle, or a round triangle; this is a logical self-contradiction. But the idea of divine omnipotence seems to imply that God must be able to do anything which does not involve obvious contradiction.
A more subtle problem is raised by the following question: can God create a stone which is too heavy for God to lift? If God cannot create such a stone, the idea of total divine omnipotence would seem to be denied. Yet, if God could create such a stone, there is something else which God cannot do – namely, lift that stone. And so, at least on the face of it, God turns out not to be omnipotent.
Such logical explorations are unquestionably valuable, in that they cast light on the difficulties of speaking about God. One of the most important rules of Christian theology is to ask closely concerning the meaning of words. Words with one meaning in a secular context often have more developed, subtle, or nuanced meanings in a theological setting. “Omnipotence” is an excellent example, as we shall see.
Defining Omnipotence
We may explore the definition of omnipotence by considering some arguments developed by C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) in his celebrated book The Problem of Pain (1940). Lewis begins by stating the problem as follows: “If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty he would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either the goodness, or power, or both.” This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form. But what does it mean to say that God is omnipotent? Lewis argues that it does not mean that God can do anything. Once God has opted to do certain things, or to behave in a certain manner, then other possibilities are excluded:
If you choose to say “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,” you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire a meaning because we prefix to them the two other words: “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but non-entities.
God, then, cannot do anything that is logically impossible. But Lewis takes the case further: God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with the divine nature. It is not merely logic, he argues, but the very nature of God which prevents God from doing certain things.
The point at issue here had been made much earlier by Anselm of Canterbury in his Proslogion, as he meditated upon the nature of God. Anselm noted that omnipotence – understood as the ability to do all things – was not necessarily a good thing. If God is omnipotent, God could do things such as tell lies or pervert justice. Yet this is clearly inconsistent with the Christian understanding of the nature of God. The concept of divine omnipotence must therefore be modified by the Christian understanding of the divine nature and character. This point is brought out particularly clearly by Thomas Aquinas, as he discusses the issue of whether God can sin:
It is commonly said that God is almighty. Yet it seems difficult to understand the reason for this, on account of the doubt about what is meant when it is said that “God can do ‘everything'.” [...] If it is said that God is omnipotent because he can do everything possible to his power, the understanding of omnipotence is circular, doing nothing more than saying that God is omnipotent because he can do everything that he can do. [...] To sin is to fall short of a perfect action. Hence to be able to sin is to be able to be deficient in relation to an action, which cannot be reconciled with omnipotence. It is because God is omnipotent that he cannot sin.
Aquinas's discussion makes it clear that further clarification is needed concerning the idea of divine omnipotence. An important advance in this matter was the distinction between “the two powers of God,” especially associated with the fourteenth-century writer William of Ockham (c.1285–1347). We turn to this discussion now.
The Two Powers of God
How can God act absolutely reliably, without being subject to some external agency which compels God to act in this reliable way? This question was debated with some heat at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, in response to a form of determinism originally developed by the writer Averroes (1126–98). For Averroes, the reliability of God ultimately rested upon external pressures. God was compelled to act in certain ways – and thus acted reliably. This approach was, however, regarded with intense suspicion by most theologians, who saw it as a crude denial of the freedom of God. But how could God be said to act reliably, unless it was through external compulsion?
The answer given by Christian writers such as Duns Scotus (1266–1308) and William of Ockham takes the following form: the reliability of God is ultimately grounded in the divine nature itself. God does not act reliably because someone or something makes God act in this way, but because of a deliberate and free divine decision to act like this. God's reliability or faithfulness is not externally constrained but is determined by God's own character.
In his discussion of the opening line of the Apostles' Creed – “I believe in God, the Father almighty” – Ockham asks precisely what is meant by the word “almighty” (omnipotens). It cannot, he argues, mean that God is presently able to do everything. God was once free to act in any way. However, by doing this, God has now established an order of things which reflects a loving and righteous divine will and that order, once established, will remain until the end of time. God is therefore not now able to do anything which contradicts this established order.
Ockham uses two important terms to refer to these different options. The “absolute power of God” (potentia absoluta) refers to the options that existed before God committed himself to any course of action or world ordering. The “ordained power of God” (potentia ordinata) refers to the order established by God their creator asan expression of the divine nature and character. The “two powers of God” do not refer to two different sets of options now open to God. Rather, they refer to two different moments in the history of salvation
The distinction is important, yet difficult. In view of this, we shall explore it in a little more detail. Ockham is inviting us to consider two very different situations in which we might speak of the “omnipotence of God.” The first is this: God is confronted with a whole array of possibilities – such as creating the world or not creating the world. God can choose to actualize any of these possibilities. This is the absolute power of God.
But then God selects some options and brings them into being. We are now in the realm of the ordained power of God – a realm in which God's power is restricted, by virtue of God's own decision. Ockham's point is this: by choosing to actualize some options, God has to choose not to actualize others. Choosing to do something means choosing to reject something else. Once God has chosen to create the world, the option of not creating the world is set to one side. This means that there are certain things which God could do once which can no longer be done. Although God could have decided not to create the world, God has now deliberately rejected that possibility. And that rejection means that this possibility is no longer open. God's actions thus limit God's options.
This leads to what seems, at first sight, to be a paradoxical situation. On account of the divine omnipotence, God is not now able to do everything. By exercising the divine power, God has limited options. For Ockham, God cannot now do everything. God has deliberately limited the possibilities. God chose to limit the options which are now open. Is that a contradiction? No. If God is really capable of doing anything, God must be able to become committed to a course of action – and stay committed to it. God, in exercising omnipotence, chose to restrict the range of options available. This notion of divine self-limitation, explored by Ockham, is important in modern theology, and merits further exploration.
The Notion of Divine Self-Limitation
The idea of God's self-limitation began to be explored with new interest in the nineteenth century, specifically within a Christological context. The favored framework for the discussion of the idea of divine self-limitation was usually that suggested by Philippians 2: 6–7, which speak of Christ “emptying himself.” This passage is often regarded as a pre-Pauline hymn, cited by Paul to make some important theological points. The term “kenoticism” (from the Greek kenosis, “an emptying”) came to be widely used to refer to an approach to the identity of Christ which speaks of his “emptying himself” of the attributes of divinity – either by leaving them behind or by setting them to one side.
German theologians sympathetic to this approach – such as Gottfried Thomasius (1802–75), W. F. Gess (1819–91), and F. H. R. von Frank (1827–94) – argued that God chose a course of self-limitation in becoming incarnate in Christ. Thomasius adopted the position that God (or, more accurately, the divine logos) set aside (or became emptied of) the divine metaphysical attributes (such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence) in Christ while retaining the moral attributes (such as divine love, righteousness, and holiness). Gess, however, insisted that God set aside all the attributes of divinity in the incarnation, thus making it virtually impossible to speak of Christ being “divine” in any sense of the term.
In England, the idea of kenoticism was later in developing and took a somewhat different form. Convinced that traditional Christologies did not do justice to the humanity of Christ (tending to portray him in terms which approached Docetism), writers such as P. T. Forsyth (1848–1921) and Charles Gore (1853–1932) argued that those attributes of divinity which tended to be seen as obliterating Christ's humanity had been set to one side. Thus, Gore's Incarnation of the Son of God (1891) developed the idea that Christ's full earthly humanity involved a voluntary self-emptying of his divine knowledge, with a resulting human ignorance. There was thus no difficulty raised by theobservation that the gospel records seemed to suggest that Jesus was possessed of a limited knowledge at points.
At first sight, this appears to be a debate affecting Christology, not the doctrine of God. Yet, on further reflection, it becomes clear that, from a Christian perspective, the identity of Christ shapes our understanding of the identity of God. This can be seen with particular vividness in the later writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45), who interprets the powerlessness of the crucified Christ as a paradigm for the powerlessness of God in the world. In his Letters and Papers from Prison, dating from the closing years of the Second World War, Bonhoeffer reflects on this point as follows:
God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. [...] The Bible directs us to God's powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.
In an age which has become increasingly suspicious of the idea of “power,” it is perhaps refreshing to be reminded that talk about “God almighty” does not necessarily imply that God is a tyrant but that God chooses to stand alongside people in their powerlessness – a major theme in interpretations of the cross of Christ, to which we shall return in Chapter 11 (pp. 273–5).