On the other hand, even though no creature existed, God's power would not be barren, for "creatures are not an end to God." Regarding the deity's power, medieval theologians contended that there are certain things that even an omnipotent deity cannot do. Indeed, the production of secondary causes, capable of accomplishing certain effects, requires greater power than the direct accomplishment of these same effects. 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. Hence the consideration of the knowledge and will of God precedes the consideration of His power, as the cause precedes the operation and effect. 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. 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. 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. The transition from possibility to actuality or from act to potentiality, occurs only in creatures. The activity of God is simple and eternal, without evolution or change. 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.
#OMNIPOTENCE OMNISCIENCE OMNIPRESENCE OMNIBENEVOLENCE FREE#
Omnipotence is perfect power, free from all mere potentiality. 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. A proposition that is necessarily true is one whose negation is self-contradictory. 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." In Scholasticism, omnipotence is generally understood to be compatible with certain limitations or restrictions. 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.
(In this version, God can do the impossible and something contradictory. A deity is able to do anything that it chooses to do.
These positions include, but are not limited to, the following: The term omnipotent has been used to connote a number of different positions. The word omnipotence derives from the Latin prefix omni-, meaning "all", and the word potens, meaning "potent" or "powerful".
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