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PART I PROBLEMS
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1 DIVINE POWER, GOODNESS, AND KNOWLEDGE
William L. Rowe
In the major religions of the West—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the dominant
theological tradition has long held that among the attributes constituting the nature of
God are to be counted his unlimited power (omnipotence), perfect goodness, and
unlimited knowledge (omniscience). Within this theological tradition stands the work of
many influential theologians and philosophers such as Maimonides (1135–1204),
Aquinas (1225–1274), and al-Ghazali (1059–1111), who have labored to explain how we
should understand these fundamental aspects of the divine nature. Our aim here is both to
explain these three attributes of the divine nature and to discuss some of the difficulties
philosophers and theologians have suggested arise when we endeavor to conceive of a
being possessing such extraordinary attributes. Before beginning this task, however, we
should note that the attributes ascribed to God in the historically dominant theological
tradition within the major Western religions—including unlimited power (omnipotence),
perfect goodness, and unlimited knowledge (omniscience)—are not characteristic of the
entire history of thought about God in these religious traditions. Indeed, in the early
religious texts that are authoritative in these traditions one can find descriptions of the
divine being that do not suggest, let alone imply, that God is omnipotent, perfectly good,
and omniscient. In the Old Testament of the Chris tian Bible, to cite just one example,
God, through his prophet Samuel, orders Saul to totally exterminate a tribe of people, the
Amaleks, to “kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and
ass” (1 Samuel 15). Upon receiving his orders from on high Saul dutifully kills the
Amalek men, women, children, and infants, but takes for himself and his men the best of
the oxen, sheep, and lambs. On learning of this, God is angry and regrets making Saul
king because, although Saul carried out his order to kill all the men, women, children,
and infants, he did not follow God's order to slaughter all the livestock as well. On
reading such a story one can hardly avoid the conclusion that the being giving such
orders is viewed as a tribal deity rather than an omnipotent, perfectly good, omniscient
being. And just as in the youthful periods of these three great religions one can find
indications that God was then thought to be something less than an omnipotent, perfectly
good, omniscient being, so too in the modern period one can find views of God, even
among prominent theologians, that are clearly departures from the dominant conception
of God in the great religions of the West. Some theologians in the modern period, for
example, have conceived of God as a natural process in nature (Wieman 1958), or as a