Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The follow on question "Then can he lift it?" assumes that the rock has already been created, so the correct answer would be "Assuming he makes the rock, no". And if asked "Is God thus not all powerful?", the correct answer would be "God is indeed all powerful until such time as the rock is created". The "Paradox" then is not really a paradox.
Epicurus was not an atheist, although he rejected the idea of a god concerned with human affairs; followers of Epicureanism denied the idea that there was no god. While the conception of a supreme, happy and blessed god was the most popular during his time, Epicurus rejected such a notion, as he considered it too heavy a burden for a god to have to worry about all the problems in the world.
Omnipotence is perfect power, free from all mere potentiality. 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. The activity of God is simple and eternal, without evolution or change.
The finite God theodicy maintains that God is all-good (omnibenevolent) but not all-powerful . The best of all possible worlds theodicy, a traditional theology and defended by Leibniz, argues that the creation is the best of all possible worlds. The original sin theodicy holds that evil came into the world because of humanity's original sin.
[2] [3] This argument has been challenged with the assertion that the hidden reasons premise is as plausible as the premise that God does not exist or is not "an almighty, all-knowing, all-benevolent, all-powerful". Similarly, for every hidden argument that completely or partially justifies observed evils it is equally likely that there is a ...
For some thinkers, the existence of evil and hell could mean that God is not perfectly good and powerful or that there is no God at all. [62] Theodicy tries to address this dilemma by reconciling an all-knowing, all-powerful, and omnibenevolent God with the existence of evil and suffering, outlining the possibility that God and evil can coexist.
Besides, the question whether God's way of expressing his sovereignty is consistent with meaningful human decisions which are free from compulsion is a significant theological question in Christianity. [13] The debate on this question was first clearly expressed by Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century. [14]
As such, it attempts to explain the probability of an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omnibenevolent (all-loving) God amid evidence of evil in the world. A number of variations of this kind of theodicy have been proposed throughout history; their similarities were first described by the 20th-century philosopher John Hick , who classified them as ...