God’s Omnipotence – Gregory Rich

Source: groups.wfu.edu

Can an omnipotent God do anything, including things that are logically impossible, like make a stone too heavy for God to lift? As the Bible says: “With God all things are possible.” (Mark 10:27) Rene Descartes is a supporter of this view of omnipotence; he says, “I do not think that we should ever say of anything that it cannot be brought about by God”. Descartes maintains that since God made the laws of logic, He could unmake them, and so yes, He could create logical impossibilities, such as square circles. To think otherwise, according to Descartes, would be to dishonour God’s greatness.

The Cartesian view of omnipotence, however, has a number of problems. First, for Christians, there is scriptural evidence against the view. Hebrews 6:13 & 18 tell us that God cannot lie or swear by a being higher than Himself (Vardy Puzzle of God, page 112). Second, since this view of omnipotence implies that God can create a square circle, this view implies a self-contradiction. For this reason alone, many of us would reject the Cartesian view of omnipotence just as we would reject any view that implied an absurdity. For example, if our assumptions about our financial position lead us to conclude that we’ll go broke by next Tuesday and also we won’t go broke by next Tuesday, then obviously there’s a problem with some of our assumptions.

Defenders of Cartesian omnipotence may rightly respond that such a criticism merely assumes the reliability of principles of reasoning that Descartes’s argument has called into question (cf. Davies 175). But on the contrary, I believe there is reason to accept the reliability of reason and logic here as elsewhere. Understanding and clear communication seem to rest on the principle of non-contradiction, that no statement is both true and false at the same time (cf. Nash 40). To see what I’m getting at, suppose I tell you that at one and the same time someone’s in this room and no one’s here. Since I’d be talking nonsense, it’d be hard to know what I meant. The difficulty of understanding is compounded when we’re told that God can become bad and simultaneously be completely good, that He can even cease to exist while at the same time continuing to exist. What could it mean if we’re told that not only can God create logical impossibilities but also He can’t create them? If we don’t presuppose the principle of non-contradiction in our discussions, it’s difficult to understand what we’re saying and what we’re meaning to say in our discussions, and for this reason I believe it is reasonable to presuppose the principle of non-contradiction in our discussions.

Further, it’s hard to make sense of a God to whom the principle of non-contradiction does not apply. What is He like? As Peter Geach says, “as we cannot say how a non-logical world would look, we cannot say how a supra-logical God would act or how he could communicate anything to us by way of revelation” (68). We believe He says one thing, but He could at the same time be saying its opposite. Is He promising eternal life and at the same time not promising it? How would we know we had revelation in this case? In this way, exempting God from logic calls into question key doctrines of traditional religions. In fact, putting God beyond reason makes it difficult to tell the difference between sense and nonsense in religion.

Refusing to apply the principle of non-contradiction to God makes it harder for us to understand religion and each other. And beyond that, Descartes provides faulty reasons for God’s exemption from logic.

Descartes claims that it dishonors God to think of Him as subject to the laws of logic in the way that Zeus was held to be subject to the Fates. But there need be no dishonor here at all if, with equal plausibility, we regard the laws as reflections of God’s rational mind. Then God could, without dishonor, subject Himself to those laws, or simply choose to manifest Himself as rational.

Descartes also seems to think that God’s freedom requires that He be able to overturn the laws of logic. He says, “God cannot have been determined to make it true that contradictories cannot be true together, and therefore … he could have done otherwise”. But given the kind of being God is, true He can’t have been determined by something outside Him, but that doesn’t mean that He could have done the opposite. If God is self-determined and so free but at the same time limited by His complete knowledge and goodness, it is not so clear that He could have done the opposite especially given the confusion and chaos that would result from His doing the opposite.

Descartes’s reasons for saying that God could break the laws of logic are not compelling. Further, as we saw before, failing to presuppose the principle of non-contradiction leads to serious difficulties of communication and understanding. Thus, there is reason not to accept the Cartesian idea that God can do anything and everything, including the logically impossible.