Among the things that seem impossible, I guess an angle cannot be trisected using only a straightedge and compass, 7 + 5 cannot be made to equal 13, nor can anyone create square circles, and I doubt that unmakeable hammers can be made. Also, it seems analytic that a Euclidean triangle cannot be four-sided: some things are impossible by their very nature just like uncreatable worlds are impossible to create. 
Sporadic theological and historical musings by Edgar Foster (Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies and one of Jehovah's Witnesses).
The Supreme cannot simultaneously be anyone's equal.
ReplyDeleteDo you think "God cannot lie" is an apriori truth such that it could be known without revelation?
ReplyDelete(I persoanlly do, I think it can be derieved by the an analysis of truth, lying and the concept of God).
Philosophically completely uneducated atheists often mock by asking, "Can God create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it?" However, they are unaware that in Christianity, the concept of divine omnipotence is initially such that God can do everything that does not involve a conceptual contradiction.
ReplyDeleteIt seems, however, that through this, logic and ethics limit the omnipotence of God: God cannot make what has happened unhappen, cannot create a square circle; cannot sin, cannot annihilate Himself, etc. But the omnipotence only extends to everything, that is, to the totality of the real. Logical and metaphysical contradictions are not real, but nothing; therefore, they cannot be realized. And for this reason, "it is more correct to say that these cannot be realized than to say that God cannot realize them." (Thom I 25, 3 c; cf. Anselm. Prosl. 7.) The possibility of sinning is not a mark of power or strength, but of impotence, weakness. Augustine rightly says: "God is omnipotent; and because He is omnipotent, He cannot die, cannot be deceived, cannot deceive, and as the Apostle says: cannot deny Himself, cannot be unfaithful to Himself." (August. Symb. ad cat. I 1 cf. Serm. 213, 1; 214, 4; ctra Faust. XXVI 5; Civ. Dei V 10, 1.) Divine omnipotence is one with divine wisdom and holiness, the very realization of logic and ethics, the source of all logical and ethical realities and truths, not of nothingness. The efforts of Peter Damian (Petrus Dam. De divina omnipotentia in reparatione corruptae (cf. Hieron. Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.) and making the undone done [1067]) and others, which sought to declare the logical, ethical, and metaphysical laws, even the principle of contradiction, as inapplicable to God as a limit to omnipotence, have been unequivocally rejected by theologians since Hugh of Saint Victor.
It is also often said that excluding something from God's possibilities is a negative definition, but this is so only formally so grammatically. This is similar to when I say, for example, "I have no debt." Formally, this sentence is negative, but what I deny thereby is a negation, and the negation of a negation is positive, just as in mathematics, subtracting a negative number results in a positive.
God cannot die either-Hab. 1:12
ReplyDeleteDear Nincsnevem, I got your other message about Augustine. Thanks, and I will watch the movie.
ReplyDeleteGood observation, Philip.
ReplyDeleteI notice that Nincs likewise said God cannot die.
ReplyDeleteRoman, yes, I think it is a priori and I believe that Fewer takes an approach like that is his Five Proofs book. See also Bonaventure and his Journey of the Mind to God.
ReplyDeleteActs Ch.17:28NKJV"for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’"
ReplyDeleteThere is absolutely nothing JEHOVAH Could gain from his creation we are in debt to him with a debt that can NEVER Be repaid. He has the power to compel belief if he chose to. The fact that we can choose to disbelieve at all is a reason to take him at his word.