This page contains B grade level summary revision notes for the Nature & Attributes of God topic.
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AO1: Descartes’ view of omnipotence
- Descartes defends voluntarism about omnipotence.
- He claims God can do even what seems logically impossible.
- For example, God could have made it false that 4+4=8.
- We cannot imagine how this could be true, but Descartes says our imagination is not the limit of God’s power.
- So, even if a four-sided triangle is logically impossible for us, God could still create it.
- God is not bound by the rules that constrain human thought.
- On this view, logic depends on God rather than God depending on logic.
AO2: The in/coherence of voluntarism
- Descartes says God created everything, including logic, so God cannot be limited by it.
- Logical impossibility is a limitation for humans and for reality as we know it, but not for God.
- Because everything depends on God’s “immensity”, even the laws of logic depend on God.
- So, God could make contradictions true, like changing mathematical truths.
Counter
- Critics argue this misunderstands what logic is.
- Logical laws are not like physical laws that could have been different.
- They are necessary.
- If God “could do the logically impossible”, then it would not be impossible.
- So the claim is self-defeating: it undermines the meaning of “impossible”.
- This makes voluntarism incoherent rather than a deep view of God.
Evaluation
- A better solution is Aquinas’ approach: logic is not a created thing that could have been different.
- Logical and mathematical truths are necessary features of God’s eternal intellect.
- So they are “co-eternal” with God: uncreated but not independent of God.
- This keeps God as the source of all being without saying God can make contradictions true.
- It also avoids a further problem for Descartes.
- If God could do the impossible, then God could remove evil without sacrificing free will or soul-making.
- That would make the logical problem of evil harder to answer, not easier.
- So voluntarism is both incoherent and unhelpful, whereas Aquinas gives a more stable view.
AO1: Aquinas’ view of omnipotence
- Aquinas argues omnipotence is the power to do anything logically possible.
- God is the perfection of being, so divine attributes must fit God’s perfect nature.
- God cannot do imperfect things that contradict this nature.
- So, God cannot create something that both exists and does not exist.
- That is not a “thing” at all, but a contradiction.
- Similarly, God cannot destroy himself, because God’s nature involves necessary existence.
- God also cannot sin, because sin would contradict omnibenevolence.
- Aquinas says God cannot create logically impossible objects like a four-sided triangle.
- But this is not a defect in God’s power.
- It is because such “tasks” have no genuine possibility.
- Aquinas concludes it is better to say such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them.
AO2: The paradox of the stone
- Mackie’s paradox asks whether God can create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it.
- If God can create it, then God cannot lift it.
- If God cannot create it, then God cannot do something.
- Either way, it seems there is at least one thing God cannot do.
- So Aquinas’ definition looks incoherent.
Counter
- Mavrodes replies that the stone is an impossible object.
- It is not just a very heavy stone, but a stone too heavy for God to lift.
- But if God is omnipotent, God could lift any stone.
- So “a stone too heavy for God to lift” is like a square circle.
- Aquinas can say God cannot create it because it is not a possible thing.
Evaluation
- This shows Mackie has not found a genuine paradox.
- The question smuggles in a contradiction while pretending it is a normal task.
- Once we clarify what the stone really is, Aquinas can reject it as logically impossible.
- So the paradox does not undermine omnipotence as “the power to do all logically possible things.”
- Descartes can also respond by allowing contradictions, but that comes at the cost of coherence.
- Aquinas’ response is cleaner because it preserves meaning and avoids absurdity.
- So the stone paradox fails to show any real limitation in God’s power.
- It only shows that contradictions cannot be made into genuine tasks.
AO1: Self-imposed limitation
- Self-imposed limitation rejects Descartes and agrees with Aquinas that God can only do the logically possible.
- It also agrees that God could override free will or disrupt physical order, but would not because it would undermine God’s plan.
- However, it differs from Aquinas about why God does not act.
- For Aquinas, God’s restraint follows necessarily from God’s perfect nature.
- For self-limitation theorists, restraint is a contingent choice to hold back power.
- This fits views where God is everlasting or temporal rather than timeless.
- If God is temporal, God’s decisions cannot be treated as fixed from eternity.
- So God’s non-exercise of power is understood as an ongoing choice made within time.
- This makes God’s restraint part of a relationship with creation rather than a necessary feature of divine nature.
AO2: Self-limitation and eternal vs everlasting
- Classical theists like Aquinas argue God is eternal and outside time.
- God’s will and power are unchanging and flow necessarily from divine perfection.
- This supports his account of omnipotence, where God’s actions follow from an eternal nature.
Counter
- Self-limitation theorists reject this and argue God exists in time.
- They claim a perfect God should be capable of relationship and responsiveness.
- So God must be everlasting or temporal, making real choices over time.
- On this view, God’s decision not to use certain powers is a freely chosen restraint, not something fixed by eternal nature.
- This makes God more personal and involved with creation.
Evaluation
- However, this debate depends on whether God is eternal or temporal.
- If God is in time and changing, then divine actions become reactions to events, which risks making God dependent on the world.
- Aquinas’ eternal view avoids this problem by grounding God’s power in a perfect and unchanging nature.
- This also makes better sense of omnipotence as something stable and absolute rather than something limited by ongoing choices.
- So Aquinas’ account of eternity is more convincing, and this supports his account of omnipotence over the self-limitation view.
AO1: Boethius
- Boethius recognised a problem between God’s omniscience and human free will.
- If God knows everything, this seems to include our future actions.
- If God already knows what I will do next, it might seem fixed and I could not choose otherwise.
- If we lack free will, then God could not justly punish us for our sins.
- So omniscience appears to conflict with free will and divine justice.
- Boethius solves this by arguing that God is eternal and exists outside time.
- God does not experience events one after another like we do.
- Instead, God sees all of time at once in a single eternal present.
- God does not predict what we will do but simply sees our free choices as already present.
- So God’s knowledge does not cause or determine our actions.
- We still choose freely, and God just observes those choices eternally.
AO2: Whether eternity solves foreknowledge
- Even if God’s knowledge does not force our actions, it still seems to make them fixed.
- If God already knows I will choose vanilla, then I cannot choose chocolate.
- If my future is already known with certainty, it seems I cannot do otherwise.
- So it makes little sense to call these choices free.
Counter
- Boethius replies with his distinction between simple and conditional necessity.
- God’s knowledge makes our future actions certain, but it is not what makes them happen.
- Our free choices are what make them fixed.
- God knows them because we will choose them, not the other way around.
Evaluation
- Boethius’ defence becomes stronger when developed by Anselm.
- Boethius explains that something can be necessary in a conditional way without removing freedom.
- If you see someone walking, it is necessary that they are walking, because what is happening is happening.
- But earlier they could have chosen not to walk.
- Anselm calls this “following from” necessity.
- Our actions become necessary because they follow from our free choices.
- So when God eternally knows what we will do, those actions are fixed, but only because we freely chose them.
- God sees the future choices that we will in fact make.
- So divine knowledge depends on our freedom rather than removing it.
AO1: Anselm’s four dimensionalism
- Anselm develops Boethius’ idea to explain how God can act on time without being trapped inside it.
- He says God is not in time, but all of time is in God.
- Just as all of space exists within time, all moments of time exist within God’s eternal present.
- So God is “with” every moment of time at once, rather than merely watching from outside.
- This keeps God eternal and unlimited, while allowing God to sustain and act upon the world.
- God’s knowledge is not a guess about the future.
- It is direct awareness of all moments within divine eternity.
AO2: The coherence of an eternal present
- Kenny argues that the idea of God seeing all time in one moment makes no sense.
- Events in time happen in order, with some clearly before others.
- For example, my parents’ birth happened before mine.
- If God sees all events as happening at once, then God is not seeing them as they really are.
- This would challenge omniscience.
Counter
- Anselm can reply that events can be non-simultaneous in time but simultaneous in eternity.
- Within time, my birth and my parents’ birth are separated.
- Within eternity, all moments are present together.
- So God is not getting the order wrong.
- God sees temporal order as temporal order, while also holding all times together in the eternal present.
Evaluation
- Anselm’s approach makes the eternal view more coherent.
- Two events can be separate in time but present together in eternity.
- So God does not misunderstand the order of events.
- Instead, God sees the whole of time at once in a different way.
- This helps defend the compatibility of omniscience and free will.
- Boethius sometimes makes eternity sound like just a different perspective.
- But Anselm treats eternity as a real mode of existence containing all times.
- This strengthens the claim that God can know everything without removing human freedom.
AO1: Swinburne
- Swinburne offers a different solution to the problem of omniscience and free will.
- He rejects the idea that God is eternal and outside time.
- He argues that a timeless God would be lifeless and unable to have real relationships.
- Relationships require interaction within time.
- So Swinburne says God is everlasting and exists within time.
- To protect free will, he argues God limits his own knowledge.
- God could know the future if it were fixed, but free choices are not yet determined.
- So God only knows what can be known, such as what is physically determined.
- He does not know future free actions.
- This may seem to deny omniscience.
- But Swinburne argues that genuinely free actions cannot be known in advance at all.
- So God still knows everything it is possible to know.
AO2: Eternal vs everlasting and omnibenevolence
- Critics argue that Swinburne’s view does not fit well with religious tradition.
- The Bible often shows God knowing future actions, such as Jesus predicting Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial.
- Also, Anselm argues that if God were in time, God would be limited by time.
- This seems to conflict with divine perfection.
Counter
- Swinburne responds that God may know us very well and make accurate predictions.
- Like a parent who knows a child’s character, God can strongly expect what we will do.
- But this is not certain knowledge.
- Future free actions remain unknowable, so God’s lack of certainty protects our freedom.
Evaluation
- This reply struggles to match the strength of biblical claims.
- Scripture presents God as knowing the future with certainty, especially in prophecy.
- Swinburne’s idea of strong prediction seems weaker than this.
- By contrast, Boethius and Anselm avoid this problem.
- They say God does not predict our choices but directly observes them in eternity.
- So God’s knowledge depends on our free actions rather than determining them.
- This allows certainty without removing freedom.
- For this reason, the eternal view fits better with traditional belief and gives a stronger solution to the problem.