Philosophy of Religion Year 13 Eternal,
Omnipotent, Omniscient,
Omnibenevolent: Summary of
Arguments
Mr. DeZilva
December 17th and 18th, 2013
For the Break:
Will provide plenty of wider reading
material, including further material on
Boethius and Aquinas (Eternal God)
 Will provide an exam-type question to
keep everyone sharp!
 Will send all of the powerpoints
 Will send a few review sheets
 For Wednesday: very brief and casual
“test” to check your understanding.

Omnipotence
Argument:
- God is all powerful
-God has supreme power, this is evident by
giving human salvation and carrying out
plans for the universe
For example: The story of Abraham and his
wife Sarah (“Is there anything too hard for
the Lord?”)
For example: Miracles
Omnipotence - Support
Support:
Anselm  God is “that which nothing greater can
be conceived.” If God were anything less than
omnipotent, then we would be able to conceive of a
greater, more perfect, more powerful being.
Descartes  God has all the perfections (including
perfect power) and can do absolutely anything
possible (even the logically impossible)
Aquinas  God is in charge of the whole world,
creating it, and keeping it in existence – while
everything is dependent on God for its existence.
◦ God can do everything that is absolutely
possible and is not capable of sin.
Omnipotence - Support
Macquarrie When we speak of the power
of God, we are using analogy and should
understand that God’s power is different
from our own – there is still an element of
“unknowable” to God.
◦ Any limitations that God may have are
self-imposed.
The Doctrine of Kenosis “Emptied
himself” of His own omnipotence
Omnipotence - Challenges
Vardy God’s omnipotence is limited. God
is not in control of the whole of history,
and it is wrong to suggest that everything
which happens is because of the will of
God. He is not able to move things around
like “pieces on a chessboard.”
Paradoxes The Paradox of the Stone &
The Paradox of the Free Will Creature
Unpredictability An arbitrary God, a
random God capable of Evil
Eternal
Argument
Two perspectives:
Atemporal God is timeless, outside time, and not
bound by time. The creator of time
Sempiternal God is everlasting and moves along
the same timeline that we do, but never has a start
or a finish.
Example: Man on the Hill (Aquinas)
 Atemporal = God on top of the hill watching the
paths of people below him
 Sempiternal = God on the paths with the people
with perfect understanding of where they will go
Eternal - Atemporal
- God exists outside time and can see the past, present,
and the future with perfect knowledge
- God is in control of time, He created it.
- God is not bound by space and can be everywhere.
- Not bounded by time – is part of every past and will
be a part of every future.
+  Shows that God is not limited and it does not
affect his omnipotence. Shows that God is immutable
(incapable of change). Supported by the Creation story
(in Genesis).
-  The idea of an unchangeable God limits God’s
personal connection with humanity. A characterless
God (no sympathy, emotion, etc).
Eternal - Sempiternal
- God is everlasting, but along our timeline
- Changeable, in order to have relationships and
respond to people’s actions.
- God exists within time because He is able to
respond to it.
+  A personal God and a responsive God that
has relationships with His creation. If God is
immutable, then He cannot be affected by anything
(i.e. cannot love). More in-line with what the
Biblical Scripture talk of with God.
-  Is this God really “all-knowing” if He may not
know the future?
Support - Atemporal
Aquinas  God is the man on the hill; God
is unchanging, loving and immutable. Knows
perfect good and is perfect good.
Anselm  God is outside of our knowing
Augustine  God is immutable and cannot
be other than he is.
Boethius  God’s timeline is “all in one” –
no past present or future. BUT (next slide)
Support - Sempiternal
Pike  Process Theology: God is not
outside time at all, but present in the world
with us, acting, and responding as we do
Swinburne  A timeless God contradicts
the Bible; doesn’t need to be changeless, he
interacts with people and decisions will
change.
Boethius  Able to understand our daily
occurrences completely, as they happen, but
does not limit our free will
Challenges - Atemporal
◦ Our thoughts and desires are all performed in the present with
reference to a past and future. The claim of a timelessness for
God demands that all of God’s actions and thoughts and desires
take place simultaneously. There is only the “Now” for a timeless
God.
◦ A timeless God is not able to love, because God is immutable
and not affected by anything.
◦ Swinburne: “The God of the Old Testament […] is a God in
continual interaction with men, moved by men as they speak to
him, his action being more often in no way decided in advance”
◦ Pike: If we have a timeless, eternal God, then Free Will is
certainly limited, given that God has known what will happen.
(Handout)
◦ God became man (Jesus) and entered human history at a
particular time.
◦ Because God is unchanging, is there any point to prayer?
Challenges - Sempiternal
◦ If God is bounded by time, this gives rise to his potential
limitations; he would be limited in His present because of his
past and future.
◦ Limits God’s “omnipotence” and “omniscience”
◦ Numbers 23:19 – An example of a fixed intention, unchanging
God.
◦ Augustine: If God is everlasting, why did he pick a particular
moment to create the universe, and what was he doing for all
the “time” before that?
◦ If prayer can, in fact, change God’s mind, so that he ends up
acting differently from the way He might’ve acted without prayer,
thus, is God really a perfect being that is greater than that which
can be conceived (Anselm)?
God as Impassible

Impassible – incapable of suffering pain or harm; unfeeling; unchanging

Problems that arise  If God is unchanging and incapable of feeling,
then what is the point of prayer or the concept of a miracle?

Charles Hartshorne God cannot be loving if he is also impassible
◦ God is pure actuality; can give, but not take
◦ God remains unaffected, no matter the tragedy
◦ God cannot know us, interact with us, or hear us
◦ An immutable God could not have a purpose which related to a
changing world.

Nelson Pike Rejected God’s timelessness because a
timeless being could not be affected by another
◦ God is present in the world with us (Process Theology)
God as Impassible

Aquinas  Defends God being immutable
◦
◦
◦
◦
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
God is both able to be loving and unchanging
Differentiated God’s Will and God’s Activity
Will = God does not change his mind
Activity = God making a change
Other things change in relation to God
Creel God can know what his own will
is in response to infinite possibilities.
◦ Weather & Decision example (options based
on weather does not entail a change of mind)
Omniscience
Argument
- God knows everything
- There is nothing that He cannot know
- God has no false beliefs; cannot be mistaken
- Whatever God knows, it is true
- God’s knowledge includes things that are
unavailable to the human mind
- He knows something is going to happen even
before it happens
Omniscience – Original Support
Luis de Molina  God would know what people
would freely choose to do in all circumstances
where some choice was available; known as Middle
Knowledge
Descartes & Aquinas via Omnipotence arguments
*Note: Omniscience is a subset of
Omnipotence, so consider those arguments
when discussion Omniscience.
Omniscience - Challenges
Moral Value
-Because God knows all, are we capable of having morality considering
that He knows what we will do and when we will do it?
Rewards & Punishment (Dan Barker)
-What is the purpose of God rewarding and punishing acts (as He
does in The Bible), if he already knows the acts are going to occur?
The Problem of Evil
-If God is, in fact, all knowing, then why does evil still exist. If all
knowing, then surely evil would be avoidable for God given his
omnipotence.
No Free Will
- Elements of God’s Omniscience argument takes away human free
will and sets us up for a more Predestination (Calvin) life.
Omniscience – Challenges 2
Kant
Without freedom, there can be no moral
choices. If God’s omniscience determines
our choices, can He then punish us for
those choices?
For Example: Robot Programmer
Omniscience – Support (Again)
Friedrich Schleiermacher  argued that there is a
solution to this problem of omniscience and free will.
The Analogy of Close Friends
The Analogy of Directions and Reliable Guess
Richard Swinburne  The Sempiternal God still allows us to
have free choice and does not limit His omniscience. He knows
everything about us in that moment, but the decisions we make
are ours
Boethius  God can see things in a different way from the way
in which we see them because humans exists within time, God
does not have the same time constraints we do.
Omnibenevolence
God is all Loving or all Good
 “God is Love” – First Letter of John
 God’s Goodness (God is Perfectly Good)
is internal and an essential characteristic
to God
 Morality is grounded in the character of
god, who is perfectly good.
 Old Testament – hesed
 New Testament – agape (Unconditional
Love)

Omnibenevolence - Support

Aquinas  When we speak of the love of God, we are
using analogy, God is infinitely greater than us and we
can only understand a tiny proportion of divine love.

William Alston  “We can think of God Himself, the
individual being, as the supreme standard of goodness.”

Jurgen Moltmann  The Crucified God
 Christianity shows that God gets involved with us and
shares the pains of human existence to the extent of
suffering death by torture (via Jesus Christ).
Omnibenevolence - Challenges

Richard Dawkins The God Delusion


God of the Old Testament potentially has favourites, God’s
punishments seem less than just, Scripture rules are “obnoxious”
John Stuart Mill “Nearly all the things which men are hanged
or imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature’s everyday
performances”

There is no intelligent designer, and if there is, it is a cruel one. “Either
there is no God, or there exists an incompetent or immoral God”
Further Challenges

“Does God command things because they are good, or are things
good because God commands them”
– Plato in Euthyphro (Euthyphro Dilemma)
- If God commands things because they are good, then it implies
there is a standard of goodness independent of God. There is a
standard of values outside of his control and creativity

God’s love results in our own responsibility
◦ Being loved by God led a whole nation to obey his
commands (The Ten Commandments)

God punishes and judges those He loves the most
◦ The story from the Book of the prophet Amos