The intrinsically impossible is the self-contradictory, and its mutually exclusive elements could result only in nothingness. To include the contradictory within the range of omnipotence, as does the Calvinist Vorstius, is to acknowledge the absurd as an object of the Divine intellect, and nothingness as an object of the Divine will and power. If these decrees were not irrevocable, it would follow either that God's wisdom was variable or that His decisions sprang from caprice. The absolute power of God extends to all that is not intrinsically impossible, while the ordinary power is regulated by the Divine decrees. God cannot effect the non-existence of actual events of the past, for it contradictory that the same thing that has happened should also not have happened.
Omnipotence is perfect power, free from all mere potentiality.
Hence, although God does not bring into external being all that He is able to accomplish, His power must not be understood as passing through successive stages before its effect is accomplished. The activity of God is simple and eternal, without evolution or change. The transition from possibility to actuality or from act to potentiality, occurs only in creatures. When it is said that God can or could do a thing, the terms are not to be understood in the sense in which they are applied to created causes, but as conveying the idea of a Being possessed of infinite unchangeable power, the range of Whose activity is limited only by His sovereign Will. Omnipotence is all-sufficient power.