Omnipotence And St. Thomas Aquinas :: essays research papers

Omnipotence and St. Thomas AquinasOmnipotence literally means the ability to do all things, or to have absolutepower. This quality seems to be generally accepted as an intrinsiccharacteristic of the Judaeo-Christian immortal, as it says in Luke I. 37, "...thereis nothing that theology cannot do.". Certain objections can be raised to attributingthis characteristic to god however, in-so-far as this characteristic seems toconflict with other accepted attributes of god. In The Summa Theologica St.Thomas Aquinas addresses near of these objections, the most telling of which canbe restated as     (I) To sin is an action, however god is unable to sin. Therefore godcannot be omnipotent.     (ii) The greatest act executable of god is his practice of "sparing andhaving mercy". There are actions judged to be much greater however, such ascreating a world. Therefore god is not omnipotent.     (iii) If god is omnipoten t, then everything is possible and nothing isimpossible. If this is true however, things which are necessary (things whichcannot possibly not exist) are no longer so. This is impossible - therefore godcannot be omnipotent.Aquinas begins his rebuttals by defining what is encompassed by thecharacteristic of divine omnipotence. He explains that god is able to all thingswhich are "possible absolutely", which he defines as all things which can belogically expressed without the predicate being in conflict with the subject -i.e. god is capable of all things which do not involve a contradiction in terms.This does not imply any defect in the power of god, Aquinas goes on to say,because impossible things by definition have "no aspect of possibility",moreover, it is absurd to expect divine omnipotence to encompass the logicallyimpossible.     (I) Aquinas answers the first objection as follows. He explains that"...to sin is to fall short of perfect action hence to be able to sin is to beable to fall short in action..." which he attests is contrary to the meaning ofdivine omnipotence.     (ii) In answering the second objection Aquinas points out, "It is not