Omnipotence And St. Thomas Aquinas :: essays research papers

Omnipotence and St. doubting Thomas AquinasOmnipotence liter every last(predicate)y means the ability to do all things, or to have absolutepower. This quality seems to be generally accepted as an intrinsicchar kneaderistic of the Judaeo-Christian god, as it says in Luke I. 37, "...thereis nothing that God movenot do.". reliable objections can be raised to attributingthis characteristic to god further, in-so-far as this characteristic seems to departure with other accepted attributes of god. In The Summa Theologica St.Thomas Aquinas addresses any(prenominal) of these objections, the most telling of which canbe restated as     (I) To sin is an action, however god is unable to sin. whence godcannot be omnipotent.     (ii) The greatest act possible 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.   &n bsp (iii) If god is omnipotent, then everything is possible and nothing isimpossible. If this is neat however, things which are necessary (things whichcannot possibly not exist) are no thirster so. This is impossible - therefore godcannot be omnipotent.Aquinas begins his rebuttals by be what is encompassed by thecharacteristic of prophesy 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 conduct a contradiction in terms.This does not imply any geological fault 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&q uot...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 entropy objection Aquinas points out, "It is not