Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

OMNIPOTENCE

166

OMNIPOTENCE. A being is omnipotent
if it is all-powerful. Philosophical atten-
tion to the divine attribute of omnipo-
tence has involved such questions as:
Is an omnipotent being restrained by
logic or coherence? For example, can an
omnipotent being make a square circle?
Could a being be so powerful that it
creates itself? Is there a conflict between
the divine attributes of omnipotence and
essential goodness?
A plausible analysis of essential good-
ness involves the property of being
only able to do good and not evil. But if
an omnipotent being can do anything,
shouldn’t an omnipotent being be able to
do evil? If so, it seems that there cannot
be an essentially good, omnipotent being.
There are different replies historically to
this argument. Some argue that an essen-
tially good being may have the ability
to do evil, but simply never does evil.
Others argue that the ability to do evil is
not itself a worthy, positive ability but a
defect and unworthy of God.

OMNIPRESENCE. A being is omnipres-
ent if there is no place where it is not.
Theists traditionally believe that God is
ubiquitous or omnipresent but allow
there to be a sense in which God may be
absent when, for example, people do evil
in defiance of God’s will and nature. In
such events, God is still present insofar as
God continues to be the omnipotent,
omniscient Creator and sustainer of the

cosmos, but God’s reality is being deliber-

ately ignored or shut out by evil agents.

OMNISCIENCE. A being is omniscient

if it either knows all truths or knows all

truth that it is possible to know.

ONTIC INQUIRY. The study of parti-

cular beings, things, or objects (God or

gods, the soul, particular animals, and so

on) rather than being itself. Heidegger

lamented the fact that after the pre-

Socratics, philosophers seemed to forget

the topic of Being and focused instead on

particular beings. Analytic critics such

as Rudolf Carnap charged Heidegger’s

focus on being as conceptually absurd,

but Heidegger’s work has continued to

have a good reception among continental

philosophers.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. Argu-

ments for the existence of God based on

the concept of God as maximally excel-

lent or unsurpassably great. There are dif-

ferent versions of this form of argument,

but most argue for the existence of God

from the idea or concept of God. If suc-

cessful, the argument would establish the

actual existence of God based on reflec-

tion on concepts and ideas, and not on an

a posteriori examination of the contin-

gency and ordered nature of the cosmos.