God’s Omnipotence and Immutability

GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE AND IMMUTABILITY HERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS of attacking theologial beliefs. One is to show that there are mistakes in he rational arguments used to support them; another is to show that they do not fit the facts; yet another is to claim that since they cannot be falsified they are vacuous; and, fourthly, one can attempt to show that they are mutually inconsistent . Attacks oi the fourth type will be discussed here, attacks which pertain primarily to God's omnipotence and immutability . It will be argued that there are ways that the theist can meet these attacks without abandoning any essential beliefs . Thus, in what follows, my sole purpose is to establish the mutual consistency of certain theological beliefs and I shall not try to prove that they can meet criticisms of types 1, 2 and 3. Th·e Paradox of Omnipotence In "Evil and Omnipotence", J. L. Mackie presents the "paradox of omnipotence": "can an omnipotent being make rules which then bind himself?" 1 Mackie's argument for the paradox, in essence, is this: if a being cannot make rules which are binding on himself, then, in this respect, he is not omnipotent ; if he can, and does, then he is no longer omnipotent.2 Thus, if God, say, creates beings with free will (i.e., whom he can no longer completely control) He loses His omnipotence, yet, if He cannot, He is not omnipotent. The analysis of " omnipotent", therefore, appears to disclose that this concept is self-contradictory or paradoxical. 1 J. L. Mackie," Evil and Omnipotence", in God and Evil: Readings on the Theological Problem of Evil, edited by Nelson Pike, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs: 1964), p. 57. 2 Mackie, " Evil and Omnipotence ", pp. 57-58. 44 GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE AND IMMUTABILITY 45 The Paradox of Immutability The traditional conception of a perfect being, a conception which has its roots in classical Greek philosophy, is that a perfect being is eternal and unchanging. It is thought that a perfect being is immutable because any change would have to be for the better or for the worse. If for the better, then the being in question was not, prior to the change, perfect; if. for the worse, then, upon changing, it would no longer be perfect. In itself the claim that God is immutable does not appear to pose any problems, but when God's specific attributes are considered problems do arise. Here I shall confine my attention to the attempt to reconcile immutability with omniscience. Let it be supposed that there is a sequence of events, A, B, C, D ... and that corresponding to this sequence of events there is a sequence of mental ' bits ' of information, a, b, c, d . . . One need not think of these ' bits ' as ' mirroring ' or ' picturing ' their corresponding events; rather one is committed only to the claim that, if X knows, say, A, then X has a as a mental content. Let us imagine further that the kind of knowledge involved is direct as opposed to inferred knowledge. E.g., I know directly that my glasses are on the table before me and directly (through memory) that they were there a moment ago, but I only know through inference or indirectly events of which I have knowledge but which I have not witnessed and am not witnessing. One might argue against this distinction (which bears some resemblance to Russell's distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description) that even knowledge that my glasses are before me requires inferences since I must ' infer ', on the basis of sight, touch, and so on, that my glasses are, in fact, before me. However, problems of this sort need not detain us, for even if we must make such inferences, God, given His omniscience, does not. Given God's omniscience, all events, even future events, are directly known by Him. Also, given His omniscience, His direct knowledge of these events is generally, if not always, fuller than ours; it is complete. We can say, then, that, corresponding to events, A, B, C, D ... God has ' bits ' of knowledge or mental contents 46 ROBERT CARR-WIGGIN a, b, c, d ... Let...