Are the concepts of omnipotence and omniscience mutually exclusive? God is generally considered to be both omnipotent and omniscient. Let’s say he created the universe. At the time of creation he knows how everything is going to play out. Doesn’t that limit his options to intervene in the future? In order to maintain his omniscience, he can’t intervene in a way that he didn’t know he was going to do beforehand. And if his actions are limited by this constraint, can he be omnipotent?

Comments

I think the difficulty here lies primarily in understanding God's knowledge and power as sort of "supersized" versions of our own knowledge and power. God's attributes are analogical at best. But the key to breaking through this kind of puzzle has to do more with the concept of time than of either omniscience or omnipotence. It's a commonplace of theology and phil of religion that God is "outside time." In other words, God's experience is not sequential, like ours is, but is eternally and universally present. So it makes no sense to talk about what God may or may not do "in the future" and what he knew "beforehand." Of course, what it means to be outside time is just as much, if not more, of a puzzle than the one you originally set out, but it seems to be closer to the target of inquiry than concerns about whether God's knowing or acting "comes first."

Read another response by Kalynne Pudner

Read another response about Religion, Time