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Summary

This script delves into the theological concept of divine omnipotence, exploring God's all-powerful nature and addressing common challenges raised about His power. It explains that God's omnipotence does not extend to logical contradictions, such as creating a square circle, and highlights God's inability to sin due to His perfection. The discussion also touches on the problem of evil, the distinction between moral and natural evil, and various theodicies, including free will and Christ's role in addressing evil through the cross. The speaker emphasizes systematic theology and understanding divine attributes in relation to God's nature.

Takeaways

• 💪 Divine omnipotence means God is all-powerful but does not extend to logical contradictions, such as creating a square circle.
• 🪨 Questions like 'Can God create a rock too heavy for Him to lift?' misunderstand the nature of God's power and the limits of finite objects, not His omnipotence.
• 🚫 God's power doesn't include the ability to sin because sin is a deficiency, and God's nature is perfect and cannot act in a deficient manner.
• ⚖️ The distinction between God's absolute power (what God could do before creation) and God's ordained power (what God does within the established order of creation) clarifies how God acts within self-imposed constraints.
• 🤔 The theological debate on divine self-limitation, especially in relation to the Incarnation of Jesus, explores whether God voluntarily limits His power in certain contexts, without ceasing to be fully God.
• 😈 The problem of evil raises the question of how an all-powerful, good God allows evil and suffering, challenging traditional views of divine omnipotence and goodness.
• 📉 In Christian thought, evil is seen as a privation or perversion of good, not something God created, protecting God's goodness and avoiding dualism between good and evil.
• 🌪️ The distinction between moral evil (caused by human actions) and natural evil (caused by natural events) highlights different challenges in explaining suffering and evil in the world.
• 🧠 Theodicies, or defenses of God's justice, include the idea that evil serves a greater purpose, like human growth, or that it results from human misuse of free will.
• ✝️ Christ-centered approaches, like Barth's, suggest that God’s response to evil is seen in the cross, where God enters into suffering to defeat it, rather than providing a purely philosophical explanation.

Q & A

What is divine omnipotence?

Divine omnipotence refers to God's attribute of being all-powerful, meaning God has the ability to do anything that is logically possible.

Can God create a square circle or a rock too heavy for God to lift?

No, God cannot create logical contradictions such as a square circle or a rock too heavy for God to lift. This is not a limitation of God's power but a reflection of the nature of logical consistency and the properties of objects like squares and rocks.

Why can't God sin if God is all-powerful?

God cannot sin because sin is a defect or limitation, and God's perfection means He cannot act in a deficient way. This is not a limitation on God's power, but a reflection of God's perfect nature.

What is the difference between God's absolute power and God's ordained power?

God's absolute power refers to His ability to do anything that is logically possible, including all the options available before He committed to a specific course of action. God's ordained power is the power to act within the order and structure He established when He created the world.

Does God limit Himself in any way?

Yes, God chooses to limit Himself in some ways, such as through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, these limitations are self-imposed and do not diminish God's nature or divinity.

What is the 'problem of evil' in relation to divine omnipotence?

The 'problem of evil' arises from the question of how an all-powerful and all-good God can allow evil and suffering to exist in the world. If God is both good and omnipotent, why does He allow evil to persist?

How does Christianity define evil?

In Christian tradition, evil is defined as a privation or perversion of the good. It is not a creation of God but rather a defect in God's good creation, a parasitic reality that distorts what should be good.

What is the distinction between moral evil and natural evil?

Moral evil refers to evil and suffering resulting from human choices, such as murder. Natural evil refers to suffering caused by natural processes, such as natural disasters or diseases.

What is a theodicy, and what are some examples?

A theodicy is an argument that seeks to defend God's goodness and justice in the face of evil. Examples include the idea that evil is necessary for human growth and development or that evil results from humans abusing their free will.

How does the cross of Christ relate to the problem of evil?

The cross is seen as God's answer to evil, where God takes the consequences of evil upon Himself to defeat it. This perspective, as proposed by theologians like Karl Barth, emphasizes a Christ-centered understanding of God's response to evil.

Outlines

00:00

💪 Understanding Divine Omnipotence

This paragraph delves into the concept of divine omnipotence, explaining that it means God is all-powerful. However, God's power does not extend to logical contradictions, such as creating a square circle. The paragraph discusses common challenges to this attribute, like the 'square circle' or 'rock too heavy to lift' paradoxes, explaining that these are not limitations on God’s power but rather reflections on the nature of logic and finite objects. It also covers the relationship between God's omnipotence and his perfection, emphasizing that God's power operates within the bounds of his nature, such as his incapacity to sin, because sin reflects a deficiency, not a true exercise of power.

05:05

📜 God's Absolute and Ordained Power

This section distinguishes between God's absolute power (his ability to do anything before committing to a specific course of action) and his ordained power (his actions within the framework he established in creation). It explores the concept of divine self-limitation, especially in the context of the Incarnation, where Jesus may have limited his divine powers to fully experience human life. The discussion underscores that such self-limitation is voluntary and not a diminishment of divine nature. It also touches on the complexities of balancing Jesus' full divinity with the concept of self-imposed limitations during his earthly ministry.

10:09

😈 The Problem of Evil

The paragraph addresses the problem of evil, a central issue in theology questioning how an all-powerful, good God allows evil and suffering. It explains that evil is not an equal counterpart to good but rather a privation or perversion of the good. The text argues that God did not create evil but allowed free beings to choose, leading to the existence of evil. The paragraph also differentiates between moral evil, resulting from human choices, and natural evil, such as disasters or diseases, acknowledging the challenges in reconciling these with God’s nature.

15:09

🤔 Theodicies: Responses to Evil

This paragraph explores various theodicies, or defenses of God's goodness in the face of evil. It outlines three approaches: (1) Evil as necessary for a greater good, where it is seen as essential for human growth and development; (2) The free will defense, which posits that God gave humans freedom, and evil results from misuse of that freedom; and (3) A Christ-centered approach that focuses on the cross as God's ultimate response to evil. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses, with the free will defense being strong in theological tradition but weaker in addressing natural evil.

20:11

🔄 Complementary Views on Theodicy and Omnipotence

This section discusses the need for a comprehensive view of theodicy and omnipotence, suggesting that multiple approaches can complement each other. While the free will defense and greater good arguments address philosophical questions, a Christocentric approach emphasizes God’s engagement with evil through the suffering and death of Jesus. The text suggests that there may not be a single answer to the problem of evil, but rather a need to hold different perspectives together in tension.

Keywords

💡Omnipotence

Omnipotence refers to God's attribute of being all-powerful. In the video, omnipotence means that God can do anything that is logically possible and consistent with His nature. However, God's omnipotence does not extend to logical contradictions, such as creating a square circle, because such contradictions are inherently impossible, not limitations of divine power.

💡Logical Contradictions

Logical contradictions refer to things that are inherently impossible, like a square circle. In the context of the video, it is explained that God's omnipotence does not cover these contradictions, as their impossibility is due to the nature of the objects, not a limitation of God's power.

💡Absolute Power

Absolute power is the concept of God's power before He chose to act in any specific way, such as before creation. It refers to all the potential actions God could have taken. The video discusses how God's absolute power includes all possibilities before He committed to a particular plan for the world.

💡Ordained Power

Ordained power refers to God's power exercised in accordance with the order and patterns He established when He created the world. The video contrasts this with absolute power, emphasizing that God's actions now align with His ordained plan, but this is not a limitation on His omnipotence.

💡Theodicy

Theodicy is a theological concept that seeks to defend God's goodness and omnipotence in the face of evil and suffering. The video outlines various theodicies, including arguments that evil serves a greater good or is a consequence of human free will. These attempts to reconcile the existence of evil with a benevolent and omnipotent God.

💡Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is the philosophical and theological dilemma of how a good and omnipotent God can allow evil and suffering in the world. In the video, this is described as the 'big problem' raised by God's omnipotence and goodness. It questions why an all-powerful God wouldn't eliminate evil or why He would create a world with suffering.

💡Free Will

Free will is the human capacity to choose between different actions. In the video, it is discussed as a key reason why evil exists. God gave humans free will, which allows for the possibility of choosing evil. Some theodicies argue that a world with free will is the best possible world, even if it means that humans can misuse their freedom and cause suffering.

💡Moral Evil

Moral evil refers to evil and suffering that result from human actions, such as murder or theft. The video distinguishes moral evil from natural evil, explaining that moral evil arises from humans exercising their free will in a harmful way, and this is often easier to explain within the context of theodicies.

💡Natural Evil

Natural evil refers to suffering that arises from natural processes, such as natural disasters, diseases, or accidents. The video highlights that natural evil is more difficult to reconcile with God's goodness, as it does not result from human moral choices but rather from the structure of the world itself.

💡Incarnation

The Incarnation refers to God becoming human in the form of Jesus Christ. In the video, the Incarnation is discussed in the context of divine self-limitation, where Jesus may have chosen to limit His divine powers to fully experience human life. This raises theological questions about whether God limits Himself while still remaining fully divine.

Highlights

Divine omnipotence refers to God's all-powerful nature, but does not extend to logical contradictions, such as creating a square circle.

God's inability to perform logical contradictions, like making a rock too heavy to lift, is not a limitation of His power, but a reflection of the nature of finite objects.

God’s omnipotence must be understood alongside His other attributes, such as goodness and perfection, guiding how His power is exercised.

God cannot sin, not because of a limitation in His power, but because sin is a defect and God, being perfect, cannot act in a deficient way.

The distinction between God's absolute power (all possible options before creation) and God's ordained power (the order God committed to post-creation) is significant in theology.

Divine self-limitation is an important theological concept, particularly in relation to Christ’s incarnation, where God limits Himself without ceasing to be fully God.

The problem of evil, or suffering, challenges the doctrine of divine omnipotence and goodness, asking why an all-powerful, good God allows evil and suffering to exist.

Evil, in the Christian tradition, is understood as a privation or perversion of the good, rather than something created by God.

The distinction between moral evil (caused by human free will) and natural evil (caused by natural processes) complicates the problem of evil, especially regarding natural disasters.

Theodicies are defenses of God's goodness and justice in the face of evil, including arguments like 'evil being necessary for human growth' and 'free will as the cause of evil.'

The free will defense argues that God had to create a world where humans have the choice to do good or evil, as freedom is essential to the best possible world.

Carl Barth and others argue for a Christ-centered approach to understanding omnipotence and evil, focusing on the cross as God’s response to evil, where God suffers to conquer evil.

The cross serves as God’s ultimate answer to evil, demonstrating His willingness to take on suffering to overcome it, offering a different perspective than philosophical solutions.

Evil remains perplexing and inexplicable to some degree because it is a perversion of good, which keeps it from making complete sense in theological terms.

The doctrine of divine attributes should not be treated in isolation but must be explored systematically, in dialogue with Christology, the cross, and Scripture for a complete understanding of God.

Transcripts

another divine attribute that has generated a lot of theological

discussion not just in recent history but throughout the history of the church

is divine omnipotence omnipotence means God is all-powerful God can do anything

now as soon as you say that some people will start to raise questions or try to

poke holes in divine omnipotence for example someone will say ok God can

do anything can God make a square circle well so one of the first things we want

to say is that nepeta pnes does not extend to logical contradictions no god

can't make a square circle but that's not a reflection on the limitations of

God's power God's power is unlimited but it's a reflection on the limitations of

the nature of a square and the nature of a circle and a square and circle are

different things and against time not a limitation on God's power that he can't

create a square circle that's just sort of a silly example another question

that's a little more sophisticated but like that is all could God create of

rock that's too heavy for God to lift well no the answer is no but that's not

a reflection on God's power it's or reflection on the nature of rocks

they're finite they have limitations even no matter how big you make a rock

it is gonna have dimensions it's going to have a certain weight and God is not

subject to the constraints of the finite world so again it's not a reflection on

God's power to reflection on the nature of the rock so God God is all-powerful

but God's power doesn't extend to doing things which aren't logical

contradictions we also have to remember that God's omnipotence you know has to

be understood in the context of the other attributes which includes God's

perfection and goodness and God's exercise of God's power is going to be

done in accordance with God's nature and character so it's not sort of absolute

directionless power it's a power that will be

exercised in ways that are consistent with with who God is so one of the

things that this excludes of course is sin again some people raise that

question okay God can do anything can God sin well actually no not because

again God is limited but because sin is a limitation sin is a defect sin is to

be deficient and this is what Aquinas says you know sin is you know so you are

deficient in relation to some action which you ought to carry out and you're

not in doing it as you ought so God being perfect that's his nature and so

he's not going to act in a deficient way and therefore it's wrong to think that

God could sin again not actually a limitation on God's power but a

reflection of his perfect power to do exactly what accords with His perfect

nature I'll mention a couple of other things about divine omnipotence before

getting into the big problem that's looming here many theologians have

distinguished between God's absolute power and God's ordained power so when

we talk about absolute power we're talking about God's power to do all the

options which were available before God committed God's self to a particular

course of action in terms of how God created the world so before creation we

can think that way God could have created all sorts of different possible

worlds but God's ordained power is God's power to act in accordance with the

order that he has established as an expression of divine nature and

character in the world so God has committed to certain course of action

when he created the world right so because the world has certain order and

and patterns to it so God's ability to do anything

means he has the ability to commit himself to a particular course of action

and again that's not a limitation on divine power but it's just a way of

establishing the consistency of how God acts in a way that's still omnipotent

and yet has sort of some kind of constraints on it but they're God's

constraints which God has imposed on God's self through his plan for creation

another issue which is related is the question of divine self limitation does

God choose to limit God's self in God's relationship with creation now this is

an issue that's been raised especially in relation to Jesus Christ and the

Incarnation and what was going on in particular during Christ's life on earth

did Jesus limit himself in some way limit his divine powers while he was

living his earthly life in order to more fully experience human life now that's a

potentially dangerous idea if it implies in any way that Jesus was not fully God

at any point because God is God God could not cease being God in any way so

there's a potential problem there although there would be Orthodox ways of

talking about that again in God committing to a certain course of action

in that act of the Incarnation still being God but choosing to limit himself

so we just want to be clear that it was again as a divine self limitation not at

anything imposed on God or not a requirement of God that he had to give

up divine powers in order to become human so that's another question that's

just sometimes raised in in theology especially in relation

to Christology but it says somewhat debated and controversial one so the big

problem that I was referring to a moment ago of course is the problem of evil or

sometimes the problem of suffering or the problem of pain it's really all the

same big problem and it arises out of the doctrine of

divine omnipotence and divine goodness and perfection and it goes you know the

basic question is this if God is both good and all-powerful why is there evil

and suffering in the world if he's good why is there any evil to begin with why

did he create the world that would have evil in it if he's all-powerful why

doesn't he simply get rid of evil and therefore some people say look God's

either not good or he's not all-powerful because of the presence of evil and

suffering in the world some of the things we've already said about

omnipotence and the qualifications we put on it will help us as we try to

address this question but they can't really solve it as we begin to answer

that question before we can really get into it we have to ask ourselves what is

evil and the Christian tradition has always wanted to avoid any sense that

evil and good or on equal footing and is wanting to avoid any sense that evil and

God are on equal footing or that you know evil has always existed in a way

that God has always existed evil from a traditional Christian perspective is

being defined as a privation of the good or a perversion of the good what that

means as evil doesn't have an existence of its own it's not a creature of God

it's not something that God created and put into the world God created the world

good in accordance with this good nature and everything that God created was good

evil is always a defect on God's good creation it is always a perversion it's

it's a kind of is powerful but it's a kind of parasitic reality in creation

things that are should be in and of themselves good are not what they ought

to be even Satan right we think about Satan who is you know the tempter he was

created as an angel in the traditional Christian understanding and fell from

grace so even he was created good and has not always existed as an evil

creature and was not created by God as evil so that's what how evil has been

understood again as this privation of the good and one of the things that that

does is it protects the goodness of creation and protects God from being

understood as the creator of evil some people also like to distinguish between

moral and natural evil and moral evil would be evil and suffering that results

from people's moral choices so for example when there's a murder you know

we can say well there was a murderer and so the blame for the murder is on the

person who committed the crime natural evil would be things that are resulting

from natural processes in the world such as natural disasters or sickness or eve

or or disease for example people dying as a result of a flood or a tornado or

or someone dying of cancer what's the explanation for that now natural evil is

a little bit more challenging to wrestle with in terms of the problem of evil but

both raise significant questions so arguments that try to defend God's

goodness and justice in the face of evil and suffering are called theodicies and

let me talk about three sort of types of arguments that you might see in theodicy

one is that evil is important for a greater good and this is found in a

variety of places Irenaeus and the early church is one

example John hick and more recent theology is another example where evil

is understood to be important for human growth and human development towards

maturity and the idea here is that God has

created us in order that we would grow and mature and reach a kind of Christian

perfection and in order to get there in order to strive towards the maturity

that God wants for us we have to learn to distinguish between good and evil but

obviously that requires the existence of evil if we didn't have to wrestle with

those questions we wouldn't grow and develop and become the wise and mature

creatures that God wants us to be so obviously this to a certain extent

resonates with Christian experience right that that sounds true for what

many of us have probably experienced in our Christian walk that as we go through

trials as we face temptation as we wrestle with difficult questions those

are opportunities for growth and maturity that we need to to pass through

and as we do pastor than we do grow and come to a deeper place in our faith so

on that level it certainly sounds plausible however does it give evil too

much importance does it give evil too much credit does it give you on too much

place in God's plan for the world in other words does it legitimize evil too

much to take this kind of an approach another set of arguments connects evil

to human abuse of freewill so the argument here in a nutshell is that you

know God created everything good and cute including human persons but part of

our goodness was a freedom that he gave us and we freely turned away from God

and placed ourselves in bondage to sin resulting in evil consequences for us

and for the rest of creation so McGrath gives a more elaborate summary of the

argument of planting up on page 205 of the text which is an example of this

type of argument right and and he's working on the assumption that God as a

good God needed to create the best possible world but in order for there to

be the best possible world human beings had to have

because it wouldn't be the best possible world if we were forced to only do good

because freedom is very important for for the world to be as good as it could

be in for human beings true to be as good as we could be a hypothetical world

in which people were forced to do good in other words would not be the best

possible world to use that phrase and so therefore God had to create a world with

freewill because he wanted to create the best possible world that he could create

and therefore God's not responsible if humans choose to do evil because God has

is operating under a sort of set of constraints that means he's constrained

not to compel us to do good because that act of constraining us to do good would

itself not be good in the bigger picture obviously this is a strong argument it's

got a long pedigree in theological history it's got a strong biblical

grounding lots of people have taken this approach to the problem of evil that's

not to say it's not open to challenge and question some people would say okay

but it still doesn't really solve the problem completely why on earth did we

choose to abuse the freedom that we have in the first place it's sort of still

inexplicable it's also not as helpful for dealing with that problem natural

evil it's a little it's a fairly strong way to explain moral evil but but why

then does that choice result in so-called natural evil also some people

just don't want to give human beings that much credit or want to put more in

God's hands in terms of God's sovereignty so they may push back on

that point as well just as with respect to divine impassibility someone to

refocus the whole conversation around Christology and the cross so also in

respect of theodicy and omnipotence some are saying look we

need a more crystal centric approach and Carl Bart is an example and similar

to the way that Luther was questioning impossibility and a sense of pushing

against that abstract notion of the attributes and wanting a more cross

centered understanding of God's nature and character starts saying the same

thing with respect to omnipotence he said look if you begin with an abstract

idea of omnipotence that makes the problem of evil a really central

theological problem because of because of the way you've defined God and the

foundation of your doctrine of God and God's being in character rather we

should begin with the cross the crosses are a foundation for our understanding

of God's nature and character and it's the criteria for our theology so what

does the cross tell us about evil the cross as God's answer to evil says that

God takes the consequences of evil upon himself in order to come conquer it that

God enters into suffering in the world through the humanity of Jesus and takes

it upon himself so that on the cross he can defeat it once and for all and so

the cross is an answer to evil it's not the answer that we're looking for in our

in our philosophical questioning but it's an answer now Bart's focus on

Christ is is laudable and important it's an important corrective because yeah

that's it's true the other approaches Christ doesn't feature prominently and

that is a bit of a problem so how does the cross fit into our understanding of

evil and God's response to evil very important but does it mean we throw out

the other approaches altogether or could there be a kind of complementarity here

or could they be addressing different issues could there still be a way to

wrestle with something like planting as arguments and the questions he's raising

and also see yes but here's how God has dealt with evil and and bring those two

together so so again a helpful corrective but maybe not excluding the

questions and the approaches that others have taken so there's no airtight

solution to this of evil and you know Christians have

wrestled with this for many centuries there are some good arguments they have

value they're there they're helpful to a certain extent but there's no really

airtight solution that that you can say okay now I understand completely where

evil came from what why there's evil in the world but perhaps that's appropriate

perhaps that's how it should be perhaps evil shouldn't really make sense

if it made perfect sense then we could explain it as part of God's perfect

intention for the world and and and that might end up making God the author of

evil if on the other hand evil is always a perversion of the good if evil is

always a privation of the good if it's always somehow had a human induced

defect and God's good intentions for the world then it's always going to be

troubling it's always going to be confounding it's always gonna be sort of

inexplicable and on some level why would we do that why would we engage in things

that are ultimately not for our own good or for the good of the world so perhaps

there should always be this this just frustrating inexplicable 'ti about evil

even if we can understand it to a certain extent I hope the two case

studies that I pulled out in passability and in omnipotence have underscored well

first of all what I was saying earlier about the attributes they're not

intended to be a standalone doctrine of God that you treat in isolation that's

not how the best expositions of the divine attributes were written and or

intended certainly in the earlier stages of the earlier phases or the earlier

eras of systematic theology certainly that's not what Thomas Aquinas intended

and and I use him because he's one of the

classic expositors and and one is sometimes criticized for beginning with

the attributes but he never intended that to be its own you know a full

statement of who God was and any quite clearly says look well that that's these

are some very basic things we can say they're limited and only very few people

could ever sort of get to the point of becoming to these ideas about God using

reason so we have to have divine revelation to truly come to know God is

Father Son and Holy Spirit we have to have divine revelation to the saving

knowledge of God so he really intended these to be to go together and to you

know that the the attributes were really just intended as a baseline set of ideas

about God that people like Aquinas thought would help us to read scripture

better they weren't intended to be to be before scripture or to replace

scriptures understanding of God in any way so some of the criticism I think of

the attributes is maybe a bit misplaced or hasn't really read them in their best

light according to the way some of the best theologians have have intended them

to be used I also hope that this has underscored

the importance of doing theology systematically and as the way I've

explained it in this course meaning to treat topics in relation to one another

so we don't take any one topic and treat it in isolation that's true with our

doctrine of God and true with the question like the divine attributes you

know we don't sort of put that off in isolation and say there we've got God

sorted we've got the divine nature sorted no we have to read you know

whatever we might say about the divine nature we have to have an in dialogue of

course with Christology and with with the event of the cross and it has to be

deeply rooted in Scripture and you also see how I hope you saw also how one's

openness to philosophy one's openness to the use of reason in theology really

plays into one's openness to some of these sort of philosophical arguments

about God's nature and how they should feature in our doctrine of God