A friend of mine used to say, “There is no such thing as a stupid question…just stupid people.”
He was (sort of) kidding.
I first heard this question when I was a boy in Sunday School:
“If God can do anything, can He make a rock that He can’t lift?”
My little brain went “boom”.
I’d been taught that God can do “anything”.
Jesus even said, “with God, all things are possible”.
The question of God’s immovable rock broke my childish theology.
So I chalked it up as unanswerable and committed myself to reading comic books.
Many years passed before I could offer anything beyond a shrug in response.
But I now know the correct answer to this question:
“Wow! That’s a terrible question.”
When I was a kid, the phrasing distracted me so I didn’t see the terribleness.
I visualized giant hands struggling to pick up the rock they had just formed.
The irrationality is obvious when you replace the verbs “make” and “lift” with “do”.
The question then becomes:
Can God do something that God cannot do?
The answer is: “No.”
Wait! Wait! Wait!
Before you write a blistering comment scolding me for doubting God’s omnipotence, let me finish!
God can’t do literally “anything”.
WAIT!…I’m not done yet!!!
God has a nature, just like you do.
You possess a “human nature”.
It is impossible for you to be non-human.
You can’t contradict your nature.
Likewise…
It is impossible for God to contradict to His nature.
It is impossible for God to be unholy.
It is impossible for God to be untrue.
It is impossible for God to not exist.
And it is impossible for God to do things that God cannot do.
Put another way, God cannot be stronger than God.
And if you’re worried about Jesus saying all things are possible with God…
…here’s that verse in context.
Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:24
See?
Jesus wasn’t talking about lifting rocks that can’t be lifted.
25 Responses
FYI. Mike the former pastor and mental midget is back to blogging at WP on a blog called grabaspine. Trying to pass himself off as a well read lover of books who won’t get political or religious on his blog.
Lol.
Pastor Mike: “This will be my 5th blog in 6yrs. Yeah, I know. “That’s a lot of blogs, buddy”. But we all change, grow, get tired of the old and stretch forward toward the new. Sometimes people start over because they’ve lost their way and want to begin fresh. Other times they just need a clean slate and would rather not be bogged down or hindered by the past, be it successes or failures.”
5th blog in 6yrs!!!!! Just needs a ‘clean slate’ so he’s not hindered by the past.
The dude should write his posts on an Etch-A-Sketch.
I think I’ll be investing 0.00 energy interacting with GrabASpine…
You’ve already invested more than me. 😉
I knew you were going to say that!
5 in 6 years is quite a bit. Guess he is trying to find the right combination of lies that gets him the most attention.
Funny, he calls himself a writer on his about page when, aside from blogs almost no one reads, he hasn’t written squat. What a despicable turd.
Great! He’s a fully recovered know-it-all.
Afterall humans are not omnipotent, and we have only observed this in non-omnipotent beings
What is the reason that this would apply to “omnipotent” beings also
Well humans, ants, bees and all other living organisms did not set their nature by themselves. So how did god’s nature come to be what it is
And if god can only do what is within the confines of his nature, how is that omnipotence.
What we would have is that god is just like all other living things just that god would have a relatively larger area of influence
Is your question mark key broken?
“And if god can only do what is within the confines of his nature, how is that omnipotence.”
Omnipotence is an element of God’s nature. That’s why God is NOT “just like all other living things”. You are misunderstanding omnipotence as a characteristic that certain living things happen to possess. Logically, there can only be one omnipotent being in all possible worlds. (http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-ontological-argument/the-modal-ontological-argument/)
God is not a human, ant, bee, or other living organism. God is not an organism at all. The arguments from classical theology prove that God must be a simple, immaterial being. Organism are complex and contingent and therefore cannot be what philosophers refer to as “God”.
You stated in your article that you can’t contradict your nature This is only known to be valid for things like human, ant, bee, or other living organism. God is not an organism at all, so how can you then say that this equally applies to god
What I am saying is that the concept of omnipotency is logically impossible. At most, god ( if one exist) would be a being of great but not unlimited power
I read the article, you linked I don’t see how it applies to this discussion
Scripture tells us things about God’s nature. Everything that exists has a nature. This is sometimes called the essence. Without reference to essence, you cannot tell a rock from a frog.
I agree that omnipotence is limited. God cannot do “everything”. Chaos goes against God’s nature. That’s why it’s possible to do science.
So what you are effectively saying is that complete omnipotence is logically impossible
That’s because it is logically impossible to be omnipotent
“With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Sure the passage was about salvation but the ending phrase reads
with God all things are possible
and not your
with God just some things are possible
Omnipotence is the power to do anything that is not impossible. I listed several things that are impossible for God.
There reason for this is because god is made to be the very definition of holy and true
It is not an inability from the part of god but because those words are defined to perpetually fit god
Just like it is impossible for a quadrilateral to have more than four edges, the simple reason is that a quadrilateral is defined that way, so too is with god, regardless of what god does, it is holy because that is how holiness is defined
When truth is defined as everything god says or does, it would be impossible for god to be untrue simply because that’s in the definition
Omnipotence is the power to do anything
And not the definition you are giving
You’re on the right track!
Would a quadrilateral have four sides if no human minds existed?
Are you a robot?
You are right, John…bad questions bring wrong thinking. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Look at the Blessed in Matthew 5… Not one blessing for a pleasant life, a happy childhood, a good job, a good friend, riches, respectability…I could go on. Natural happiness comes from natural happy situations…is that all we need or want? Not me. That natural kind of happiness keeps breaking apart.
I think I’ll take the kind that comes from the God that can do anything that His nature allows Him to do.
Makes total sense to me. Well said.
We’ll said, JB.
I once had a person tell me that, because God can do anything, the answer was “yes”.
Sometimes people don’t think past the first question. I think that fact explains a lot about the world.
Well done, John and Bryan!
This is actually comforting. I remember hearing that question, figuratively scratching my head, pondering it from all the angles I could see, and thinking “What a stupid idea! Of course He wouldn’t! He is the Master of infinity, time, universes…” Outwardly I shrugged, not wanting to offend the questioner. To me, the question sounded like the bone-headed riddle of a 4th grader, just past knock-knock jokes.
I like the way you wrote this, John. Thank you!
I don’t think God’s omnipotence extends into irrationality. Some things really are “impossible” – like existing and not existing simultaneously. The laws of logic and reason must be consistent if we’re going to answer any questions.
Agree. God can’t make a square circle. If God creates logic and reason and DESIGN and infinitesimal perfection/precision… He can not make 4+4=5. If chaos resulted in our reality, then (as many atheists attest) it’s possible that the absurd is possible. It’s no wonder they think there is no objective truth or morality, or anything objective. The truth might not “necessarily” be true.
The minute someone says “not necessarily” the conversation is over, IMO.