Omnipotence In Judaism
The idea of God being omnipotent is a central, or vital, part of the core beliefs of the main monotheistic religions of the world today: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Contemporary theism demands that believers in God accept the notion that He is all-powerful and not subject to limitations on this power; as the Christian Evangelist Matthew puts it in his Gospel: Jesus looked at them and said “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). In Judaism also the belief in God’s omnipotence is rooted in the Bible: “Attribute to the Lord all glory and power” (Psalm 29), and most Rabbinic works attribute to God the characteristics of omnipotence, which I will discuss in the course of this essay. **(Islam)**.
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There is nothing logically contradictory about this question: a human could, for example, build a cart heavier than he/she could lift and for an omnipotent being to be unable to complete this task would be odd. Another way of refuting this definition is by way of linguistics, which rears its head here not for the last time. Aquinas uses the verb “cannot” which, although he would consider it posing no limitation on God’s power as there is no genuine question involved, does imply, by way of linguistic meaning, that God’s power is applicable to such a case, and the result is He cannot do it. Aquinas does go some way to sidestepping this linguistic pitfall when he says in his Summa Theologica: “It is more appropriate to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them”. It has been said also that this definition doesn’t work when applied to cases of free will when a human does something not done by God – can God be said to have done this? Theists would argue that free will can be said to come from God as: “From Him everything comes, through Him everything exists and in Him everything ends”, so this argument is void. But what if we consider the question: “Can God sin?”. Sinning is most definitely an act of some kind, but God cannot sin as we see in James 1:13, "Let …show more content…
The flustered but faithful believers offer defence upon defence, swatting away the steady flow of tricky questions from the sceptics. One of the more high profile sceptics today is a certain Richard Dawkins who is scathing in his rebuke of omnipotence in his book “The God Delusion”, claiming it to be mutually incompatible with another of the supposed characteristics of God – omniscience. He reasons that if God is omniscient he must know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about the intervention which would render him not omnipotent. He quotes a verse written by Karen Owens: “Can omniscient God, who knows the future, find the omnipotence to change His future mind?”. Again this would appear to refute the possibility of an omnipotent deity, but if God were independent of time, not constricted by past, present or future, then this would not
There is nothing logically contradictory about this question: a human could, for example, build a cart heavier than he/she could lift and for an omnipotent being to be unable to complete this task would be odd. Another way of refuting this definition is by way of linguistics, which rears its head here not for the last time. Aquinas uses the verb “cannot” which, although he would consider it posing no limitation on God’s power as there is no genuine question involved, does imply, by way of linguistic meaning, that God’s power is applicable to such a case, and the result is He cannot do it. Aquinas does go some way to sidestepping this linguistic pitfall when he says in his Summa Theologica: “It is more appropriate to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them”. It has been said also that this definition doesn’t work when applied to cases of free will when a human does something not done by God – can God be said to have done this? Theists would argue that free will can be said to come from God as: “From Him everything comes, through Him everything exists and in Him everything ends”, so this argument is void. But what if we consider the question: “Can God sin?”. Sinning is most definitely an act of some kind, but God cannot sin as we see in James 1:13, "Let …show more content…
The flustered but faithful believers offer defence upon defence, swatting away the steady flow of tricky questions from the sceptics. One of the more high profile sceptics today is a certain Richard Dawkins who is scathing in his rebuke of omnipotence in his book “The God Delusion”, claiming it to be mutually incompatible with another of the supposed characteristics of God – omniscience. He reasons that if God is omniscient he must know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about the intervention which would render him not omnipotent. He quotes a verse written by Karen Owens: “Can omniscient God, who knows the future, find the omnipotence to change His future mind?”. Again this would appear to refute the possibility of an omnipotent deity, but if God were independent of time, not constricted by past, present or future, then this would not