The Nature of God

Question 1

What is the definition of ‘Omnipotent’?

Answer 1

All-powerful

Question 2

What is the definition of ‘Omniscient’?

Answer 2

All-knowing

Question 3

What is the definition of ‘Omnibenevolent’?

Answer 3

All-good and all loving

Question 4

What is the definition of ‘Eternal’?

Answer 4

Timeless, atemporal, being outside the constraints of time

Question 5

What is the definition of ‘Everlasting’?

Answer 5

Sempiternal, lasting forever on the same timeline as humanity

Question 6

What is the definition of ‘Free will’?

Answer 6

The ability to make independent choices between real options

Question 7

What is the definition of ‘Existentialism’?

Answer 7

A way of thinking that emphasises personal freedom of choice

Question 8

What is the definition of ‘Immutable’?

Answer 8

Incapable of changing or being affected

Question 9

What had Christians inherited from the Old Testament?

Answer 9

Christians inherited language, symbolism, and poetry, in which God is anthropomorphised and involved within the world. The God in the Old Testament seems to have thoughts and feelings, he is satisfied when people obey his Commandments.

Question 10

How had the writers within the New Testament influenced an understanding of God?

Answer 10

The writers of the New Testament were responsible for shaping early Christian thought as they came from a culture in which classical ideas of a timeless, spaceless, unchanging First Cause were very attractive.

Question 11

How were ideas of Plato and Aristotle woven into Christianity?

Answer 11

Plato and Aristotle were adopted and woven into Christianity, however some ideas were unsuccessful through the production of apparent contradictions, for example, the idea of ‘perfectness’ and ‘total power’.

Question 12

What is ‘the omnipotence paradox’?

Answer 12

If omnipotence itself is impossible, then there cannot be any omnipotent beings due to a self-contradictory. This uses the example of whether God can create a stone too heavy for himself to lift, or a knot that he cannot himself untie. On the one hand, omnipotence seems to be being able to do absolutely anything, yet there are some actions that seem impossible for an omnipotent being, such as ‘fail at a task’.

Question 13

Why is God’s omnipotence incompatible with omnibenevolence?

Answer 13

It would be illogical for God to both be able to do evil, due to his omnipotence, and unable to do evil, due to his omnibenevolence.

Question 14

Why is God’s omnipotence incompatible with omniscience?

Answer 14

It would be illogical for God to be both able to add to his knowledge, as he is able to do everything, yet at the same time be unable to add to his knowledge due to an his all-knowing nature.

Question 15

What is stated in Genesis 1:3?

Answer 15

“And God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light”.

Question 16

What is stated in Amos 5:8?

Answer 16

“He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns midnight into dawn and darkens day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land, the Lord is his name”

Question 17

What is stated in Matthew 19:23-26?

Answer 17

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”.

Question 18

What does Anselm depend on?

Answer 18

Anselm depends of God’s supreme power to be factual, formulating the ontological arguments, claiming that God is, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. If God were anything less omnipotent, then we would be able to conceive of a greater, more perfect and more powerful being, so God by definition must be omnipotent.

Question 19

What does Descartes believe God’s omnipotence menat?

Answer 19

When Descartes explored what it meant for God to be perfectly powerful, he came to the conclusion that God can do absolutely anything, even that which is logically impossible. According to Descartes, God could make a square circle as God is the source of logic and has the power to suspend logic or replace it. Therefore, Descartes rejected any other understanding of omnipotence as they limit God’s greatness.

Question 20

How does Descartes defend the existence of logical contradictions?

Answer 20

We are limited by logic and by the smallness of human understanding. God can see how to be self-contradictory because he is omnipotent.

Question 21

What does Descartes theodicy create?

Answer 21

If God is capable of suspending the laws of logic, it could be argued that God can allow us to have free will without the consequential evil, then the existence of evil in the world could be something which God could change.

Question 22

Why does the Bible not support Descartes’ theodicy?

Answer 22

The Bible certainly emphasises that the greatness and power of God is on a scale way beyond anything that humans can do or imagine, but it does not necessarily support Descartes idea that literally nothing is impossible.

Question 23

What does the Abraham story from Genesis suggest about Gods omnipotence?

Answer 23

Sarah is promised a child, God asks a rhetorical question, ‘is anything too hard for God?’ implying that God can do anything and everything that he wants to.

Question 24

What does the idea of ‘anything he wants to’ suggest?

Answer 24

There are things that God would never want to do because they are against his nature, such as breaking the laws of logic, failing or doing something unjust.

Question 25

What is Aquinas’ theodicy?

Answer 25

God can do anything logically possible, but if it is not logically possible then it cannot be done, even by God. From this it follows that God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with his nature because that would imply a contradiction. God is incorporeal and therefore cannot swim or die or become tired, as well as sin.

Question 26

What is stated within Swinburne’s The Coherence of Theism?

Answer 26

Gods omnipotence means that God cannot do everything, but ‘everything’ has to be understood properly. God can do and create all ‘things’ but self contradictory definitions do not refer to ‘things’.

Question 27

What is suggested in Peter Vardy’s ‘The Puzzle of Evil’?

Answer 27

Omnipotence is much more limited than many Christians have previously suggested. It is wrong to suggest that everything that happens is because of the will of God. However, this limitation is self-imposed. God chose to create the universe knowing what it would mean, therefore it is still right to call God omnipotent as nothing limits his power except when he chooses.

Question 28

What is suggested by John Macquarrie in ‘Principles of Christian Theology’?

Answer 28

Any limitations on Gods omnipotence are self imposed. God is not constrained by logic, nor by the physical world, not by the actions of human beings, but is constrained in his omnipotence merely because he chooses to limit his own power out of love for humanity.

Question 29

What does Hartshorne understands Gods omnipotence to be?

Answer 29

Other beings through their free will, are capable of putting up resistance to God. Therefore, Gods power over them is not total, although his power is always greater than that of any other being. This, for Hartshorne, is more impressive than a being that nothing can challenge. In his view, Gods omnipotence means that God cannot overcome all resistance, not that God will meet no resistance.

Question 30

What does Schleiermacher argue on Gods omniscience?

Answer 30

There is a possible solution to the problem of whether Gods omniscience restricts our freedom. He drew the analogy of the knowledge that close friends have of each others future behaviour to conclude that God could be omniscient while still allowing people to act freely.

Question 31

What is a problem with Schleiermacher’s analogy of partners and friends?

Answer 31

Gods knowledge is said to be infallible. God cannot be wrong, he never makes mistakes. There is nothing that God knows that could turn out to be untrue. God is also said to know the future, rather than making a reliable prediction of it.

Question 32

What does Kant say about freedom?

Answer 32

Without freedom, there can be no moral choices. We have to have genuine options available to us to choose between, not just an illusion that we are making free choice. If God’s omniscience determines our choices, then God cannot justifiably punish us when we do wrong or reward us when we do good.

Question 33

Why does God need to be eternal?

Answer 33

He would be much more limited without the eternal attribute. He would not know what the outcomes of actions might be, he would have to wait and see how events turn out before deciding what to do next. His omnipotence and omniscience would go reduced to a point where God could hardly be called all-powerful and all-knowing.

Question 34

Why would a God who is sempiternal need meet Anselm’s definition of God?

Answer 34

A God who is sempiternal rather than atemporal would not meet Anselm’s definition of ‘a being than which nothing greater can be conceived’, because we would be able to conceive of a greater being than one who was constrained by having to exist within time.

Question 35

Why should we consider concepts of Gods uniqueness to correlate to being outside of time?

Answer 35

Concepts of God’s relationship with time do not recognise the uniqueness of God. God can bring things about in time, and cause changes in people without being changed himself, because God is not a person in the same way we are. There are things that are possible for God, because of the unique nature of his existence, even if we cannot see how they are possible with our limited understanding.

Question 36

Why does God being sempiternal limit our free will?

Answer 36

When God already knows what we are going to choose and how things will work out for us, in a fixed and certain way, there is nothing we can influence or change and nothing for which we can be held responsible.

Question 37

What was Augustine’s view on God as timeless?

Answer 37

God has made the world at a particular point in time, which raised the issue of what God has been doing all the while beforehand if God moves alongside the same time line as we do. If God is everlasting, why did he pick that particular moment to create the universe. The biblical account of creation kings towards a timeless God, as there cannot have been a ‘before’ for God.

Question 38

What did Richard Creel suggest in his book ‘Divine Impassibility’?

Answer 38

God can be loving as well as immutable. God can know what his own will is, in response to any of an infinite number of possibilities.

Question 39

What does Boethius argue on the problem of Gods omniscience?

Answer 39

He was particularly concerned with the judgement of God, and whether it would be fair of God to praise or blame people if they did not have real moral freedom and were constrained by what God already knew about the future.

Question 40

What does Boethius state within Book V ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’?

Answer 40

“How can God foreknow that these things will happen, if they are uncertain”. If God knows that something will happen, when in fact it is uncertain, then God’s knowledge is mistaken. However, if God knows that something might happen, then it can hardly be considered ‘knowledge’, and puts God in a position of being no wiser. If God firmly knows things, then they become inevitable, becoming unfair.

Question 41

What is further stated by Boethius within Book V of ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’?

Answer 41

“The punishment of the wicked and reward for the good, will be seen to be the most unjust for all; for men are driven to good or evil not by their own will but by the fixed necessity of what is to be”.

Question 42

In what way does Boethius realise he was mistaken?

Answer 42

God can see things in a different way from what we see them. Humans exist within time. They have pasts that are fixed, a present that is gone within an instant and futures that are uncertain. Thus because futures are uncertain, humans have genuine free will.

Question 43

What does Boethius state about Gods omniscience within Book V of ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’?

Answer 43

“His knowledge, too, transcends all temporal change and abides in the immediacy of his presence’. Good can look down on us, moving along our timelines, ‘as though from a lofty peak above them’.

Question 44

What does Boethius conclude within his understanding of God’s omniscience?

Answer 44

God cannot be accused of a lack of wisdom in not realising that Adam and Eve would disobey him, nor of a lack of morality in allowing evil dictators to be born. God does not know what will happen in the future, as there is no future for God. All time happens in ‘simultaneity’ for God. We therefore have genuine free choice and can be rewarded or punished with justice.

Question 45

What is Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach to the timelessness of God?

Answer 45

Anselm’s view contrasts with ‘presentism’. We humans, he thought, live in a presentist way, but this is not how things are for God. God is timeless, just as he is spaceless, whereas we humans are constrained by time and space. God is not constrained by them but is in control of them.

Question 46

What does ‘presentism’ refer to?

Answer 46

Only the present moment exists. The past is gone, and the future has not happened yet. The only reality is that which exists in this moment.

Question 47

Does Anselm suggest we have free will?

Answer 47

God can see the free choices that we make, God literally can see us in our pasts, our presents and our futures, because of his eternal timelessness. Therefore, God can justifiably judge us and we can be held morally responsible for our actions, which we choose freely and which God can see at all times.

Question 48

What is Swinburne’s view of a God in time?

Answer 48

A person with a life has to be changeable, he argues, in order to have relationships and respond to people according to what they do. A timeless God would not be able to love, because a timeless God is immutable and is therefore not affected by anything. Therefore, God has to exist within time for God to be able to respond to us with love.

Question 49

What does the story in Isaiah of King Hezekiah’s illness suggest?

Answer 49

God had been planning to end Hezekiah’s life, but was persuaded to change his mind in response to Hezekiah’s prayer.

Question 50

What is stated in the story in Isaiah of King Hezekiah’s illness?

Answer 50

“I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.”

Question 51

What is suggested in God’s omnibenevolence and justice?

Answer 51

The Christian understanding of God holds unequivocally that God’s nature is love. Gods love, like Gods existence, has no cause. It is not brought into being by something else but is part of the nature id God from the start.

Question 52

How does Gods goodness compare to Plato’s ‘Form of the Good’?

Answer 52

The goodness of Gos described in the Bible is demonstrated as love for the people. Plato’s Form of the Good does not have feelings, and does not care whether people measure up to it or not. But the love of the biblical God is a love which is interactive, which requires a response and cares about what that response will be.

Question 53

What philosophical problems arise from Gods love?

Answer 53

Does Gods come and go or does it stay the same? Can God be affected, and be hurt, and suffer, and if so does this apply a limitation to Gods omnipotence? Does God remain unchanging, does this suggest limits to his relationship with humanity?

Question 54

What is stated in 1 John 4:7-9?

Answer 54

“Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might love through him.”

Question 55

What is Aquinas’ analogy for Gods love?

Answer 55

When we speak of the love of God, we are using analogy. We are talking of a love that is like ours in some respects, but we have to bear in mind that God is infinitely greater than us and that we can only understand a tiny proportion of divine love.

Question 56

What does Moltmann argue on the existence of God within time?

Answer 56

Christianity shows that God does not sit outside time being perfect and immutable. He gets involved with us and shares the pains of human existence to the extent of suffering death by torture. Concluding that God exists within time rather than in the timeless, eternal way suggested by Anselm.

Question 57

Why is God having a range of attributes manageable?

Answer 57

It is an effort to break God down into manageable pieces so that we can comprehend him more easily.

Question 58

What does Dawkins argue on God’s ‘infinite’ nature?

Answer 58

Argues that this ‘it’s a mystery’ kind of thinking is lazy and damaging. He argues that we should not be satisfied to set aside difficult questions and accept that we can not understand. If the idea of God is unintelligible to us then this is reason to stop claiming that such a being exists.

Question 59

What does Augustine wonder on God existing within time?

Answer 59

Augustine wondered what God was doing all the time before he created the universe, and this could be a problem for those who believe that God exists in time in a sempiternal way.