whereas (b) is not impossible by virtue of what God is said to cause (someone's suffering
intensely for no good reason) being impossible. There is nothing inherently impossible in
some person's suffering intensely for no good reason. The impossibility of (b) is not due
to the state of affairs God is there said to cause; it is due to God's causing that state of
affairs to be actual. For intrinsically
end p.
bad states of affairs that are not required by any outweighing good are simply impossible
for an all-knowing, morally perfect being to bring about. And yet those very same
intrinsically bad states of affairs may lie within the power of other beings to cause, beings
who are not hampered by being essentially morally perfect. This means that given God's
other essential attributes, there are states of affairs that we may have the power to bring
about that God is unable to bring about. Before addressing this concern, however, let's
complete our account of what it is for God to be omnipotent. For God to be omnipotent is
for God to have the power to bring about any state of affairs that is contingent provided it
is not inconsistent with some fact wholly about the past, not already actualized and such
that it can never be actualized again, not consisting of a free action of some other agent,
and not such that God's bringing it about is inconsistent with any of his essential
attributes.
The question we're left with is whether God can truly be omnipotent given that there are
states of affairs some of us can bring about that God (by virtue of some other essential
attribute) does not have the power to bring about. This is an interesting issue. There is
some intuitive pull to the idea that—putting aside an agent's free acts—an omnipotent
being must be able to cause to be actual any state of affairs that any other being is able to
cause to be actual. Alternatively, there is some intuitive pull to the idea that an
omnipotent being need only be more powerful than any other being. And this latter idea
may allow that some being can bring about a state of affairs that the omnipotent being
cannot. Still, if we compare the idea of an omnipotent, essentially perfect being to the
idea of an omnipotent being who, say, behaves in a morally good way but is not
essentially morally perfect, we may be inclined to think that the latter being would be
more powerful than the former by virtue of having the power to cause there to be an
innocent person who suffers intensely for no good reason, even if, by virtue of being
morally good but not essentially morally perfect, the being in fact always refrains from
doing so. These are interesting issues that philosophers continue to discuss (for an
illuminating discussion of this issue, see Morris 1987, ch. 3).
As we've seen, it is no easy matter to present a complete account of what it is for God to
be omnipotent. Indeed, one influential philosopher (Geach 1977) has concluded that the
task is impossible. Others (Flint and Freddoso 1983; Rosenkrantz and Hoffman 1980b;
Wierenga 1989) have pressed on with the task and produced quite promising accounts of
what it is for God to be omnipotent. In these and other discussions, one particular
example has been rather widely discussed, the so-called paradox of the stone. Because
God is all-powerful, it seems that he must be able to create a stone of any possible
weight. The question then arises: Can God create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it? If he
can, then he is not omnipotent, for he cannot lift a stone that he can create. On the other
hand, if he cannot, then he is not omnipotent, for he cannot create a stone so heavy he