Notes on the Nature and Attributes of God in accordance with the OCR Religious Studies specification. The notes provide information, scholars, ideas and quotes compiled from various resources from both within and outside of the curriculum.
Nature and Attributes of God
Omnipotence
Divine Power
key questions
1. Does God’s nature limit his power?
2. Can God create illogical truths?
3. If power = control does God control everything?
st
1 understanding
- God can do anything, including the logically impossible
- proposed by Descartes, God is in control of everything due to His power so
created the laws of logic which He could therefore change due to His absolute
power
- humans can’t understand this due to our own limitations
- ‘with men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.’
Matthew 19:24-26
criticisms
- why didn’t God create the logical contradiction of humans having free will
but always choosing the right thing
- not allowing oxymorons doesn’t limit power it just recognises the meaning of
words
- ‘a logically impossible event is not an event, just as a dead person is not
a person.’ Swinburne
- His other features already limit His power, like his omnibenevolence restricts
God from acting in certain ways
- ‘to say something is logically impossible is precisely to exclude it from
the realm of the do-able.’ Everitt
nd
2 understanding
- God can do everything that is logically possible
- ‘God can do everything that is actually possible.’ Aquinas
- supported by knowledge of God through revelation and God in the Bible. It is
known as ‘kenosis’ as God emptied himself to make all the elements of
creation possible.
criticisms
- how is this all powerful, humans can commit evil, but God can’t because if
God has the potential to do evil then does he have perfect goodness
- Hawthorne and Whitehead argue God is the greatest Being that exists rather
than can be conceived so His power is limited. A God with limitless power
would control everything, ‘it would be like praising someone who came
first in a race with no other competitors.’ Hawthorne.
Self-Imposed Limitation
- Vardy argues God’s creation has self-imposed issues for God’s nature due to
the laws of nature or human’s free will causing tensions. ‘He who made the
Pleiades and Orion.’ Amos 5:8.
, - Out of love for humans and His desire for us to have free will, God imposed
limits on Himself
- This is often linked to the idea of Kenosis
- ‘This limitation does not, however, lessen God in any significant way. It
is rather a recognition of God’s wish to create a universe in which
human beings can be brought into a loving relationship with him.’
Vardy
Omniscience
key questions
1. if God has perfect knowledge of the future then do humans have free will
2. if God knows what will happen then can humans be morally accountable for
any of their actions or does all accountability lay on God
Divine Knowledge’s Impact on Free Will
knowing doesn’t equal controlling/causing:
- Schleiermarcher argues foreknowledge does not hold causal power, so God’s
awareness of our future actions doesn’t predestine them. ‘we estimate the
intimacy between two persons by our foreknowledge… without
supposing… the one or other’s freedom is thereby endangered .’
- criticism: human knowledge isn’t perfect so there is the possibility of our
knowledge to be incorrect.
- Plantinga argues we still have the abilities to do other things, God just knows
we are going to use a particular ability. We make the free choice in the first
place, God just believes in the choice He thinks we’re going to make.
- Lane Craig is associated with this argument. God’s knowledge of the future
does not imply his control of it. God only foreknows action X because we will
choose to X, if we were not going to choose to do X then God would not
foreknow it. ‘God’s foreknowledge logically follows Jones’ action like a
shadow, even if chronologically the shadow precedes the coming of the
event itself.’ Craig
- strengths: knowing x doesn’t imply to have control over x. God foreknows x
because x will happen, not because God has decided x will happen.
- criticisms: how can a shadow pre-exist the object that creates it? Craig still
fails to explain how future knowledge that isn’t fixed can be known. ‘if
anything is about to be, and yet its occurrence is not certain and
necessary, how can anyone foreknow that it will occur?’ Boethius
Divine Knowledge’s Impact on Temporal Existence
God is atemporal:
- this means God is not bound by time in any sense, so his knowledge does
contain knowledge of the future
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