Omnipotence

## Description

'*Omnipotent'*  (Oni - from Latin  *omni* , 'all'; Potent - from Latin  *potens* , 'mighty', 'he who can'; transl .:  *The Almighty* ,  *He who can do everything* ).

## Also Named

* All-Powerful
* All-Mighty

## Definition

In theology, omnipotence is one of God's unique and incommunicable attributes. It is a theological, philosophical, religious, and metaphysical concept, addressed in the area of logic, and must carry the attribute of the greatest magnitude in which God would be a maximally great being,  or, the greatest conceivable being.

## Applications

Among the theologians addressing this attribute is the scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, in his book Summa Theologiæ, in which he addresses several different subjects about theology, where is the most defended view today about omnipotence, in which she is able to realize the absolute possible. Other philosophers presented a different view of the Thomist, such as René Descartes, who argued that omnipotence was capable of violating both contingent and necessary truths, and that God should not be limited to classical logic or mathematics.

The divergences between the views sometimes aim to answer the family of omnipotence paradoxes, which discuss the possibility of an omnipotent being existing in the face of logical problems with this quality. Most of the time, such paradoxes involve violating the law of non-contradiction.

### **Scholastic definition**

The scholastic view of omnipotence is the most classical, and currently the most defended in theology. One of the most notable advocates of this position was the scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, in his work expressed in the book compilation Summa Theologiæ.

For Thomas Aquinas, omnipotence is conceptually the totality of possible acts. He argues that the word power already carries something possible from the semantics of the word,  so that omnipotence is the ability to perform all acts in the absolute possible. Writer Clive Staples Lewis, best known for his work "The Chronicles of Narnia," takes a similar view to Thomas Aquinas, and argues that the absurd remains absurd even in the case of God. For C. S. Lewis, to say a contradictory phrase is simply to spread things that carry no meaning, and therefore would not be of any relevance when it comes to divine omnipotence.

In modal logic, a contradictory entity is not present in any possible world, so that it does not exist and cannot be true.  Evidently, existence as a quality of being must carry the possibility. , being either by contingency, or by necessity. An impossible being does not have the quality of being, and therefore does not exist, it is the same as nothing. It is argued that since these entities do not have existence or possibility as quality, they are the same as nothing, and to do nothing is nothing to do.

Most scholastic authors are based on the principles of Aristotelian logic, in particular the law of non-contradiction. This would make it impossible for omnipotence to realize or create contradictory or logical absurd entities, such as a triangle whose hypotenuse is greater than the sum of the peccaries, or an only child with two brothers. Nevertheless, one thing is because it is conceptually so that it would still be possible for scholastic omnipotence to create all these things  changing its definitions.

### **Translational definition**

It has no definite origin and is defended by few philosophers and theologians, and rejected by many, for being too simplistic and obviously illogical. Some defend it, such as René Descartes ( *Renatus Cartesius* , 1596-1650).

According to this, he can perform logically possible actions, and even logically impossible ideas, logical absurdities, pseudo-contradictions. This omnipotence possibly responds to paradoxes such as the Problem of Evil and the Stone Paradox.

This Omnipotence can create a triangle whose hypotenuse is greater than the sum of the collared peccary or an only child with two siblings without changing the definition of Triangle. It can perform actions that contradict each other by nature without contradiction.

It uses logic as an argumentative basis, although not limited to classical logic as the Thomistic definition. Some paradoxes, such as the  *Liar's Paradox*   (although this is only a paradoxical statement, not a contradictory action as an only child with two brothers) they are conceivable in reality. even violating the  *Principle of non-contradiction* , and this definition works just as the statement of this paradox.

There is an area in logic called "paraconsistent logic" that could be the solution to the existence of a contradictory being. To do so, it should assume that omnipotence is paraconsistent <COSTA, Newton & BEZIAU, Jean-Yves. 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion, Hotel Tambaú, Joao Pessoa, Brazil, 1st to 5th April 2015. p. 25. Available at: http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/cbenzmueller/papers/2015-handbook-logic-and-religion.pdf*</ref>, which points out that it is not limited to the principles of classical logic and may therefore violate the*  Principle of non-contradiction *. Ancient dialectists, such as St. Peter Damiani and Nicholas of Cusa, argued that being God omnipotent, he should have both negative and positive properties, which are opposite each other so that they could coexist with one another; In this line of reasoning, it should have properties that contradict each other.*

## Features

Omnipotence includes several fundamental attributes, without which being should not be considered omnipotent. Key features include:

* **Transcendence**: The nature of omnipotence puts it above all, so that God must be transcendental in every way. This must necessarily include all possible entities, such as time, space, life, death, natural laws, concrete entities, and abstract entities.
* **Asseity**: Because God is not conditioned on causation, he does not depend on any cause, and there can be nothing prior to him, thus having an autonomous, free, self-sufficient and unconditioned existence.
* **Infinity**: Being above limits and any perspectives, God would be free from any objects, concepts, ideas or limits. A similar example is Georg Cantor's concept of absolute infinity, an infinity that transcends and contains within itself all transfinites, beyond which no major can be conceived.
* **Timelessness or Eternity**: Philosophically, eternity is a synonym for timelessness. As transcendental, it cannot be restricted to time and the laws of cause and effect.
* **Immutability**: Because He is not limited to causal laws, and has eternity and timelessness, God does not change in His nature, always being the same.
* **Fullness and Perfection**: Infinity in its maximum sense contains all properties, so that nothing can be added or removed from it. Thus God is a complete being.
* **Supremacy**: Your authority must be above all others, without any restriction or condition at your will, however small. God's will and sphere of influence would be relentless and absolute. It can be said from here would come the statement of "being able to do everything," in order to give orders to existence, and existence to obey those orders.
* **Incorporality**: Body, in its physical definition, is everything that has mass and occupies place in space. Since mass is an attribute of space-dependent matter, and God transcends both matter and space, he must not possess a body. Thus they have no similar physiologies and biological forms to any entity.
* **Unity**: By its very definition, omnipotence is unique and perfect. It would then be impossible for several omnipotent or even higher scales to exist before such a being that is said to be omnipotent.
* **Simplicity**: Simplicity is an attribute in which God is not made up of parts, but identical in all his attributes. It can be expressed in many different ways, the main one being that God is identical with his characteristics. So God does not  would have  *ubiquity, but*  would be *. It would not*  have  *infinity, but*  would be  *infinity itself. It would not contain in itself distinct or separate attributes as distinct parts of organs, that is, distinct characteristics that together would form Omnipotence. All the characteristics said above would be just one essence of what God is.*

All in all, these characteristics are related. From infinity comes unity, embodiment, neatness, eternity, immutability, transcendence, simplicity, perfection, completeness, and supremacy. The absence of any of these attributes would invalidate omnipotence.

## See also

* Omniscience
* Omnipresence

## References

1. ↑  PLANTINGA, Alvin. 1967,  *God and Other Minds* , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
2. ↑  Canterbury Anselm.  *"Anselm's Proslogium or Discourse on the Existence of God, Chapter 2"* . David Banach's homepage at Saint Anselm College. Retrieved on 12/27/2006. Available at: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/anselm.htm
3. ↑  AQUINO, Thomas. 13th century,  *Summa Theologiæ I* , Q. XXV, Art. 3. Classical translation by Alexandre Correia. Available in:
https://sumateologica.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/suma-teolc3b3gica.pdf.
4. ↑  LEWIS, Clive. 1940,  *The Problem of Suffering* , Divine Omnipotence.
5. ↑  MENZEL, Christopher.  *The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* , Possible Worlds, 2016. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-worlds/
6. ↑  DOWDEN, Bradley. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP):  *Liar Paradox* . California State University, Sacramento. Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/par-liar/

## Users

List here notable users of such power.

pt-br:Omnipotentia