question about God's power

 The most famous paradoxical question about God's power is, "Can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it?"

People call this puzzle the omnipotence paradox.

 It tests the idea that God can do anything.

How the Paradox Works

If God cannot make the rock: Then His power has a limit, meaning He is not all-powerful.

If God makes the rock and cannot lift it: Then He faces a limit again, meaning He is still not all-powerful.

How Philosophers Answer It

Thinkers and theologians usually respond in a few ways:

• Logical Limits: Being all-powerful means doing everything that is logically possible. It does not mean doing logical nonsense. Asking for a rock too heavy for an all-powerful God is like asking for a "square circle." It is a misuse of language, not a real limit on power.

• Redefining Power: Power means having all actual power. It does not include the ability to make a self-contradiction happen.

THE ALL-KNOWING & ALL-POWERFUL GOD

And during the seminar, this question was raised: “Does God know who would accept the Gospel and who would not?”

He said: “God knows everything, but in this matter He chose not to know.”

What folly! That answer reminded me of a paradoxical question often asked by the unbelievers concerning God's power: “If God is All-Powerful, can He make a rock big enough that He is unable to carry?” 

A positive or a negative answer to the question would immediately render the All-Powerful God helpless and hopeless. 

Similarly, if the answer given was right, it would mean that God had chosen not to care about the welfare of mankind when He really did, and does, care (Psalm40:5; 1Peter 5:7). 

{ Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. ~ Psalm 40:5 }

[Amplified Bible: casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully].~ 1 Peter 5:7]

Then again, can a person choose not to know something which he already knew? 

Of course, the Almighty God can choose to do that, but to do so would mean that He has to blot out from His thoughts those things which He had purposed to do.

God does not change His Mind about His Original Word or Plan. 

He cannot contradict Himself. 

He must fulfill His Word, even if it means hurting Himself. 

And He demonstrated His great Divine Love for humanity when He sent His Only Begotten Son to die on the cross to redeem mankind. 

He not only chose to redeem but had also chosen to forgive and forget the sins of all who would call upon Him as their Saviour. 

Yes, in this case we can say that He had chosen to forgive and forget all our sins which He knew that we would commit even before we came into existence in this world. 

And redemption is given through the Blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will and the riches of His Glorious Grace.

May God help us to see His Purpose in us as we seek to understand His Word.

Could an omnipotent being create a rock so big that it cannot move it?

This question has occupied the minds of philosophers, scientists, theologians, and atheists for centuries. 

It is sometimes called the paradox of the stone, or the omnipotence paradox because it seems to get at the core difficulty in the assumption that some deity might possess the power to do…everything. 

If such a supposed deity cannot create some really big thing, then it can’t be said to be truly omnipotent. 

Heck, you or I could do that, right? 

So let’s assume any being with the rocks to call itself omnipotent would also possess the ability to do something even you or I can do. 

But then there’s this other problem: once such a rock has been created, the all-powerful deity isn’t powerful enough to move it, which takes some of the potency out of that supposed omnipotence.

The paradoxical question can be restated as a proposition X:

X: An omnipotent deity can create a rock so big it cannot move it.

Since theology is not science or mathematics (despite some attempts to axiomatize it), this proposition can never be formally proved one way or another within that realm. 

Nevertheless, many different arguments have been made over the centuries, often by Christian apologists, that start to feel like attempts to prove or disprove the omnipotence proposition and thereby rescue the idea of omnipotence. Here are some of them, in highly abbreviated form.

God could create the rock, but He would never choose to do something that contradicts His omnipotence, therefore X is false, but only because He would choose not to exercise omnipotence in this case — Augustine of Hippo, c. 400

X is illogical, and God cannot do anything illogical, therefore X is false, but does not diminish His omnipotence— Thomas Aquinas, c. 1260

God is not bound by the rules of logic and reason, therefore X is true — Rene Descartes, 1641

Our language is insufficiently expressive to even talk about omnipotence, therefore X is neither true nor false — Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1922

X is nonsense…

HIS INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS