Editing Omnipotence (section)

===Scholasticism===
The term omnipotent has been used to connote a number of different positions. These positions include, but are not limited to, the following:
# A deity is able to do anything that it chooses to do.<ref>e.g. [[Augustine of Hippo]] ''City of God''</ref> (In this version, [[God]] can do the impossible and something contradictory.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/cbenzmueller/papers/2015-handbook-logic-and-religion.pdf|title=The 1st World Congress On Logic And Religion|publisher=Freie Universität Berlin}}</ref>)
# A deity is able to do anything that is in accord with its own nature (thus, for instance, if it is a [[logical consequence]] of a deity's nature that what it speaks is truth, then it is not able to [[lie]]).{{cn|date=December 2018}}
# It is part of a deity's nature to be consistent and that it would be inconsistent for said deity to go against its own laws unless there was a reason to do so.<ref name="scireligion">This is a consistent theme of Polkinghorne's work, see e.g. Polkinghorne's ''Science and Religion''.{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}</ref>

[[Thomas Aquinas]] acknowledged difficulty in comprehending the deity's power: "All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word 'all' when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, 'God can do all things,' is rightly understood to mean that God can do all things that are possible; and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent."<ref name="newadvent.org">Thomas Aquinas, ''Summa Theologiae'', 1a, Q. 25, A. 3, Respondeo; quoted from [http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition, 1920, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, at ''New Advent'', copyright 2008 by Kevin Knight] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111121213839/http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm |date=2011-11-21 }}.</ref> In [[Scholasticism]], omnipotence is generally understood to be compatible with certain limitations or restrictions. A proposition that is [[logical truth|necessarily true]] is one whose negation is self-contradictory.
{{Blockquote|It is sometimes objected that this aspect of omnipotence involves the contradiction that God cannot do all that He can do; but the argument is sophistical; it is no contradiction to assert that God can realize whatever is possible, but that no number of actualized possibilities exhausts His power. 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, the range of Whose activity is limited only by His sovereign Will.<ref>CITATION NEEDED; probably Thomas Aquinas, ''Summa Theologiae'', 1a, Q. 25.</ref>|sign=|source=}}

Aquinas says that:
{{quote|Power is predicated of God not as something really distinct from His knowledge and will, but as differing from them logically; inasmuch as power implies a notion of a principle putting into execution what the will commands, and what knowledge directs, which three things in God are identified. Or we may say, that the knowledge or will of God, according as it is the effective principle, has the notion of power contained in it. Hence the consideration of the knowledge and will of God precedes the consideration of His power, as the cause precedes the operation and effect.<ref>Thomas Aquinas, ''Summa Theologiae'', 1a, Q. 25, A. 1, Ad 4; quoted from [http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition, 1920, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, at ''New Advent'', copyright 2008 by Kevin Knight] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111121213839/http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm |date=2011-11-21 }}.</ref>}}

The adaptation of means to ends in the universe does not argue, as [[John Stuart Mill]] would have it, that the power of the designer is limited, but only that God has willed to manifest his glory by a world so constituted rather than by another.{{cn|date=September 2021}} Indeed, the production of secondary causes, capable of accomplishing certain effects, requires greater power than the direct accomplishment of these same effects. On the other hand, even though no creature existed, God's power would not be barren, for "creatures are not an end to God."<ref>Thomas Aquinas, ''[[Summa Theologica|Summa Theologiae]]'', incomplete citation.</ref> Regarding the deity's power, medieval theologians contended that there are certain things that even an omnipotent deity cannot do. The statement "a deity can do anything" is only sensible with an assumed suppressed clause, "that implies the perfection of true power". This standard scholastic answer allows that acts of creatures such as walking can be performed by humans but not by a deity. Rather than an advantage in power, human acts such as walking, sitting, or giving birth were possible only because of a ''defect'' in human power. The capacity to [[sin]], for example, is not a power but a defect or infirmity. In response to questions of a deity performing impossibilities, e.g. making square circles, Aquinas says that "everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them. Nor is this contrary to the word of the angel, saying: 'No word shall be impossible with God.' For whatever implies a contradiction cannot be a word, because no intellect can possibly conceive such a thing."<ref name="newadvent.org"/>

[[C. S. Lewis]] has adopted a scholastic position in the course of his work ''[[The Problem of Pain]]''. Lewis follows Aquinas' view on contradiction:
{{quotation|His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say 'God can give a creature [[free will]] and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying ''anything'' about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can.'... It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of his creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because his power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.<ref> C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001). p. 18.</ref>}}