OMNIPOTENCE

Asking God to create a stone which He cannot lift implicates two tenets: an ability, and also a weakness. For example, if you ask a person to create a boat that they cannot lift, it implies two things: first, that the person has the ability to create a boat (ability), and second, that the person cannot lift it (weakness). Asking God to create a stone that He cannot lift asks Him to exercise an ability (create a stone), but also not be able to manipulate the product of that ability (be able to lift a stone), which is a weakness. The paradox is based on performing an ability which exposes a weakness.

Assuming that omnipotence aligns with the third or fourth definition listed above, God is not able to exercise an ability which will invalidate His own power. Therefore, the ability never existed in the first place in this hypothetical scenario.

If God can do absolutely anything, then God can remove his own omnipotence. If God can remove his own omnipotence, then God can create an enormous stone, remove his own omnipotence, then not be able to lift the stone. This preserves the belief that God is omnipotent because this means that God can create a stone so large that God can't even lift it. However there is a problem with this theory which is that if God were to remove his omnipotence he would not be able to restore it as he would not be omnipotent anymore. Therefore in this theory He would not be omnipotent after not being able to lift the stone.

One can attempt to resolve the paradox by asserting a kind of omnipotence that does not demand that a being must be able to do all things at all times. According to this line of reasoning, the being can create a stone which it cannot lift at the moment of creation. Being omnipotent, however, the being can always alter the stone later so that it can lift it. Therefore the being is still, perhaps, in some sense omnipotent.

This is roughly the view espoused by Matthew Harrison Brady, a character in Inherit the Wind loosely based upon William Jennings Bryan. In the climactic scene of the 1960s movie version, Brady argues, "Natural law was born in the mind of the Creator. He can change it — cancel it — use it as He pleases!" But this solution merely pushes the problem back a step; one may ask whether an omnipotent being can create a stone so immutable that the being itself cannot later alter it. But a similar response can be offered to respond to this and any further steps.

In a 1955 article published in the philosophy journal Mind, J. L. Mackie attempted to resolve the paradox by distinguishing between first-order omnipotence (unlimited power to act) and second-order omnipotence (unlimited power to determine what powers to act things shall have).[16] An omnipotent being with both first and second-order omnipotence at a particular time might restrict its own power to act and, henceforth, cease to be omnipotent in either sense. There has been considerable philosophical dispute since Mackie, as to the best way to formulate the paradox of omnipotence in formal logic.[17]

Another common response to the omnipotence paradox is to try to define omnipotence to mean something weaker than absolute omnipotence, such as definition 3 or 4 above. The paradox can be resolved by simply stipulating that omnipotence does not require the being to have abilities which are logically impossible, but only to be able to do anything which conforms to the laws of logic. A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes.[12] Essentially Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation on a being's omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a "task" is inherently nonsense. But not so, making a stone bigger than you can lift.

If a being is accidentally omnipotent, then it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone which it cannot lift and thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether or not the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power.[15] On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.[18]

If a being is essentially omnipotent, then it can also resolve the paradox (as long as we take omnipotence not to require absolute omnipotence). The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent, and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further, the omnipotent being cannot do what is logically impossible. The creation of a stone which the omnipotent being cannot lift would be an impossibility, and therefore the omnipotent being is not required to do such a thing. The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone, but nevertheless retains its omnipotence. This solution works even with definition 2, as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so.

This was essentially the position taken by Augustine of Hippo in his The City of God:“ For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.[19] ”


Thus Augustine argued that God could not do anything or create any situation that would in effect make God not God.

Some philosophers maintain that the paradox can be resolved if the definition of omnipotence includes Descartes' view that an omnipotent being can do the logically impossible. In this scenario, the omnipotent being could create a stone which it cannot lift, but could also then lift the stone anyway. Presumably, such a being could also make the sum 2 + 2 = 5 become mathematically possible or create a square triangle. This attempt to resolve the paradox is problematic in that the definition itself forgoes logical consistency. The paradox may be solved, but at the expense of making the logic a paraconsistent logic. This might not seem like a problem if one is already committed to dialetheism or some other form of logical transcendence.

Others have argued that (alluding to C.S. Lewis' argument; see scholastic definition of omnipotence), that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing "a square circle." So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a square circle?" Therefore the question (and therefore the perceived paradox) is meaningless.