{"id":1739,"date":"2026-06-16T17:11:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T21:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2026-06-29T17:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:58:09","slug":"thinking-about-omnipotence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2026\/06\/thinking-about-omnipotence\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about Omnipotence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AnI intend in the near future to do an extended blog review\/critique of Tom Oord’s provocatively titled book The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence<\/em> (2023). Partially in preparation for that, I thought I should do some reflection on the concept of omnipotence<\/strong>. This is me grappling with the topic from my “armchair.”<\/p>\n

1. Monotheism<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first place, then, among monotheists<\/em> omnipotence is universally regarded as a core divine attribute. By monotheism<\/strong> I mean the view that a singular, personal God is the sole ultimate foundation of reality. This has two implications. One is that if we were to take a complete inventory of reality, then everything on the list would either be God or something that is ultimately wholly sourced in God. The word “ultimately” is important here because I want monotheism to accommodate derivative \/ non-foundational beings that can have enough delegated independence from God to be proximate sources of their own contributions to reality. My worry is that if God must be the immediate or proximate source of everything <\/em>(other than Himself) then monotheism will collapse into pantheistic<\/em>\u00a0monism<\/em> and\/or occasionalism<\/em>. By virtue of their delegated independence, non-foundational beings are not<\/em> mere extensions of God’s being, operations, or will. God has gifted them a degree of agency in their own right. Because this agency is\u00a0gifted<\/em>, however, it is still ultimately sourced in God.<\/p>\n

A second implication of monotheism is that, as the\u00a0sole<\/em> ultimate source of everything other than Himself, there must be at least an initial explanatory moment in which nothing exists but God and God alone<\/em>. This aspect of monotheism entails creation\u00a0ex nihilo<\/em><\/strong> (CEN), which says that if<\/em> God directly or proximately brings about the existence of anything other than Himself, then the coming-to-be of those things does not depend, even partially, on anything co-fundamental alongside God.<\/p>\n

Note<\/em>: As a process theist<\/em>, Oord categorically rejects CEN. He is, therefore, not a “monotheist” as I use that term. While he believes in the foundational existence of a singular being that He calls “God,” He does not believe that this God is the sole<\/em> ultimate foundation of reality. On the process worldview, God and “creation” are co-necessary and co-fundamental aspects of a larger “world process,” with God supplying the guiding “form” \/\u00a0telos<\/em>\u00a0and each successive stage of creation supplying the “matter” for the next stage of the world process.<\/p>\n

2. Omnipotence as a divine perfection<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is omnipotence universally regarded by monotheists as a core divine attribute? There are at least three reasons.<\/p>\n

First, it’s a direct implication of monotheism and its CEN corollary that all (omni-) power (potency) is ultimately sourced in God. There can never be any possibility in all of reality that God does not, at some level, make possible. This does not mean, however, that God necessarily exercises<\/em> all power, otherwise no creatures could have enough independence from God to exercise delegated agency in their own right. But it does mean that whatever power \/ agency creatures have, they get it ultimately from God.<\/p>\n

Second, it’s an implication of the religious idea that God is\u00a0worship-worthy<\/em> to the highest possible degree. If God is to command our complete and unconditional allegiance, such that we can be called to love and worship Him with all<\/em> our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27), without any hint of reservation or conditionality, then He must be the\u00a0greatest possible being<\/em>, one who can never be upstaged by a greater, more worthy being. A weak God who could never\u00a0do<\/em> anything (like create\u00a0ex nihilo<\/em>) without depending on something else, would not be worship-worthy in this way. The Bible says God can “do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20) and it is (in part at least) for that reason that He is to be glorified by us forever (Eph. 3:21).<\/p>\n

Third, the idea (derived from worship-worthiness) that God is the greatest possible being leads to what is known as perfect being theology<\/em> (PBT). This is the heuristic idea that God’s necessary attributes include whatever it is absolutely better to be than not to be. There is no complete agreement among monotheists as to what attributes are entailed by this idea, but virtually everyone agrees that God must be necessarily existent, perfectly good and loving (omnibenevolent), have perfect knowledge of all of reality (omniscient), and (as the ultimate source of all power) be able to do anything that it is categorically better to be able to do than not (omnipotent).<\/p>\n

The upshot is that, to live up to these three guiding motivations, omnipotence needs to be conceived in a way that is both maximally expansive<\/em> (i.e., we shouldn’t limit God’s powers any more than necessary) and absolutely perfective<\/em> (i.e., we should exclude any putative powers that detract from God’s overall perfection). One way to capture both sides of this is to say, as scholar Ryan Mullins does, that omnipotence is “the most power-granting set of abilities with no liabilities,” where a “liability” is an ability that, were God to have it, would be a net negative for God’s overall greatness. For example, the ability to renege on one’s promises is a liability because it would undermine God’s worship-worthiness. How can we unreservedly worship a God whom we can’t trust to keep His promises?<\/p>\n

3. Defining omnipotence<\/span><\/p>\n

While Mullins’ description of omnipotence is a good starting point, it doesn’t tell us anything about what sorts<\/em> of abilities are “power-granting” and which are “liabilities.” What sorts of abilities contribute positively to God’s overall perfection and which detract from it?<\/p>\n

Since we want God’s power to be maximally expansive, it is sufficient to delineate major categories of liabilities and to hold, presumptively at least, that for any putative ability A, God can do A unless<\/em> it becomes clear upon reflection that A is a liability. So, let’s categorize some liabilities:<\/p>\n

One category of liabilities are abilities a full description of which yields logical incoherence. Thus, creating a square circle, making it such that 2+2=5, making a stone so heavy that God can’t lift it, and making it such that God never created after having created are liabilities. If God can do the logically impossible, then we immediately lose all<\/em> cognitive purchase on God. This completely undercuts theology since such a God could make it that, for any quality Q, God is both Q and not Q<\/em>. And since we cannot truly worship that which we cannot even partly understand, a God whose abilities put Him beyond logic is not one we can properly worship.<\/p>\n

Another category of liabilities are abilities that negate or undermine one or more of God’s other great-making attributes. The ability to commit deicide, for example, would negate God’s necessary existence. Likewise, causing or intending moral evil would negate God’s perfect goodness. Unilaterally consigning creatures to eternal conscious torment in hell would negate God’s perfect love. Forgetting information would negate God’s omniscience. Acting foolishly or irrationally would negate God’s perfect rationality. And so on.<\/p>\n

Yet another category of liabilities are abilities that God cannot do qua God<\/em> because the ability presupposes creaturely limitations of one sort or another. For example, God can’t pick His nose qua God<\/em> because God as such is not bound by any physical form. The “qua God” qualifier is important here, though. As a Christian I believe God can take on<\/em> a physical form, just as God the Son took on human nature and a human body in the incarnation. As incarnate, that is, qua human<\/em>, God the Son can pick His nose, eat fish, suckle at Mary’s breast, bleed, and die on a cross.<\/p>\n

I’m going to stop here for now. There may be other major categories of liabilities worth identifying, but I doubt it’s necessary to enumerate them all. I say this because it seems very likely the above categories can be reduced to something more basic. Indeed, all three of the categories I have identified entail incoherence<\/em>\u00a0of one sort or another. The first category concerns logical incoherence in the complete description of an act (the exercise of an ability). The second category concerns a sort of metaphysical incoherence between the exercise of an ability and other divine perfections. And the third category concerns abilities that cannot be exercised through the divine nature (i.e., qua<\/em> God<\/em>) even if they can be exercised by God through an assumed creaturely nature. The sort of incoherence involved in the third category may be reducible to that of the second. For example, one reason why God can’t pick His nose qua God<\/em> is because having a nose or any other physical body part conflicts with God’s omnipresence. And the sort of incoherence involved in the second category may be reducible to that of the first if we consider not merely the logical coherence of ability A in the abstract but the logical coherence of God’s exercising A<\/em>. The main difficulty with this latter reduction is that it can only be carried out if we have a full description <\/em>of the divine nature, and since it’s impossible for us creatures to grasp a full description of the divine nature, this reduction would be one that only God could perform. Still, even if we<\/em> cannot carry out a conceptual reduction of these three categories, so long God as can do it there is in effect a logical and metaphysical reduction of all three categories. In sum, then, while it’s helpful for our understanding to distinguish different categories of liabilities, very plausibly they all reduce down to internal incoherence<\/em> of one sort or another.<\/p>\n

Without assuming reduction of my three liability categories, I propose the following preliminary definition of omnipotence:<\/p>\n

S is omnipotent =def.<\/sub> S can perform any ability A such that (a) a complete description of A is logically coherent, (b) A is compatible with any attribute that it is absolutely better to be than not, and (c) if A presupposes limitation L, then A can be done by S only qua<\/em> a type of being for whom L is appropriate and which type of being S can assume without divesting Himself of any attribute that it is absolutely better to be than not.<\/p>\n

That’s a bit of a mouthful.\u00a0I’m sure it can be chisholmed<\/a> into something better. If we do assume that all liabilities ultimately reduce to internal incoherence, then we can simplify the definition as follows:<\/p>\n

S is omnipotent =def.<\/sub> S can perform any ability A such that a complete description of A and of S’s exercising A is internally coherent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I intend in the near future to do an extended blog review\/critique of Tom Oord’s provocatively titled book The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence (2023). Partially in preparation for that, I thought I should do some reflection on the concept of omnipotence. This is me grappling with the topic from my “armchair.”\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296],"tags":[297,171],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-omnipotence","tag-creation-ex-nihilo","tag-omniscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1764,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}