Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The goodness of God means that "God is the final standard of good, and all that God is and does is worthy of approval." [12] Many theologians consider the goodness of God as an overarching attribute - Louis Berkhof, for example, sees it as including kindness, love, grace, mercy and longsuffering. [13]
Omnibenevolence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "unlimited or infinite benevolence".Some philosophers, such as Epicurus, have argued that it is impossible, or at least improbable, for a deity to exhibit such a property alongside omniscience and omnipotence, as a result of the problem of evil.
From this perspective, God alone possesses free-will in the sense of ultimate self-determination. [30] Moreover, God acts through voluntarism in its nominalist sense. [31] This means, what God does is good not because it is guided by his character or moral structure within his nature, but only because God wants it. [32]
God's immutability defines all God's other attributes: God is immutably wise, merciful, good, and gracious: Primarily, God is almighty/omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere), and omniscient (knows everything); eternally and immutably so. Infiniteness and immutability in God are mutually supportive and imply each other.
Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything at all but, rather, that he can do anything that is logically possible; he cannot, for instance, make a square circle. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself, because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature.
The Abrahamic God in this sense is the conception of God that remains a common attribute of all three traditions. God is conceived of as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and as the creator of the universe. God is further held to have the properties of holiness, justice, omnibenevolence and omnipresence.
Classical theism is characterized by a set of core attributes that define God as absolute, perfect, and transcendent. These attributes include divine simplicity, aseity, immutability, eternality, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, each of which has been developed and refined through centuries of philosophical and theological discourse.
But if it does not do it, its knowledge of evil is limited, so it is not all-knowing. If a god is all-knowing and totally good, then it knows of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if it does not, it must be because it is not capable of changing it, so it is not omnipotent.