3. Omnipotence

By this we mean the power of God to do all things which are objects of power, whether with or without the use of means.

Gen. 17:1—“I am God Almighty.” He performs natural wonders: Gen. 1:1–3—“Let there be Light”; Is. 44:24—“stretcheth forth the heavens alone”; Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power.” Spiritual wonders: 2 Cor. 4:6—“God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts”; Eph. 1:19—“exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe”; Eph. 3:20—“able to do exceeding abundantly.” Power to create new things: Mat. 3:9—“able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham”; Rom. 4:17—“giveth life to the dead, and calleth the things that are not, as though they were.” After his own pleasure: Ps. 115:3—“He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased”; Eph. 1:11—“worketh all things after the counsel of his will.” Nothing impossible: Gen. 18:14—“Is anything too hard for Jehovah?” Mat. 19:26—“with God all things are possible.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 73—“If all power in the universe is dependent on his creative will for its existence, it is impossible to conceive any limit to his power except that laid on it by his own will. But this is only negative proof; absolute omnipotence is not logically demonstrable, though readily enough recognized as a just conception of the infinite God, when propounded on the authority of a positive revelation.”

The omnipotence of God is illustrated by the work of the Holy Spirit, which in Scripture is compared to wind, water and fire. The ordinary manifestations of these elements afford no criterion of the effects they are able to produce. The rushing mighty wind at Pentecost was the analogue of the wind-Spirit who bore everything before him on the first day of creation (Gen. 1:2; John 3:8; Acts 2:2). The pouring out of the Spirit is likened to the flood of Noah when the windows of heaven were opened and there was not room enough to receive that which fell (Mal. 3:10). And the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like the fire that shall destroy all impurity at the end of the world (Mat. 3:11; 2 Pet. 3:7–13). See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 307–310.

(a) Omnipotence does not imply power to do that which is not an object of power; as, for example, that which is self-contradictory or contradictory to the nature of God.

Self-contradictory things: “facere factum infectum”—the making of a past event to have not occurred (hence the uselessness of praying: “May it be that much good was done”); drawing a shorter than a straight line between two given points; putting two separate mountains together without a valley between them. Things contradictory to the nature of God: for God to lie, to sin, to die. To do such things would not imply power, but impotence. God has all the power that is consistent with infinite perfection—all power to do what is worthy of himself. So no greater thing can be said by man than this: “I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.” Even God cannot make wrong to be right, nor hatred of himself to be blessed. Some have held that the prevention of sin in a moral system is not an object of power, and therefore that God cannot prevent sin in a moral system. We hold the contrary; see this Compendium: Objections to the Doctrine of Decrees.

Dryden, Imitation of Horace, 3:29:71—“Over the past not heaven itself has power; What has been has, and I have had my hour”—words applied by Lord John Russell to his own career. Emerson, The Past: “All is now secure and fast, Not the gods can shake the Past.” Sunday-school scholar: “Say, teacher, can God make a rock so big that he can’t lift it?” Seminary Professor: “Can God tell a lie?” Seminary student “With God all things are possible.”

(b) Omnipotence does not imply the exercise of all his power on the part of God. He has power over his power; in other words, his power is under the control of wise and holy will. God can do all he will, but he will not do all he can. Else his power is mere force acting necessarily, and God is the slave of his own omnipotence.

Schleiermacher held that nature not only is grounded in the divine causality, but fully expresses that causality; there is no causative power in God for anything that is not real and actual. This doctrine does not essentially differ from Spinoza’s natura naturans and natura naturata. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:62–66. But omnipotence is not instinctive; it is a power used according to God’s pleasure. God is by no means encompassed by the laws of nature, or shut up to a necessary evolution of his own being, as pantheism supposes. As Rothe has shown, God has a will-power over his nature-power, and is not compelled to do all that he can do. He is able from the stones of the street to “raise up children unto Abraham,” but he has not done it. In God are unopened treasures, an inexhaustible fountain of new beginnings, new creations, new revelations. To suppose that in creation he has expended all the inner possibilities of his being is to deny his omnipotence. So Job 26:14—“Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways: And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” See Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 10; Hodgson, Time and Space, 579, 580.

1 Pet. 5:6—“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God”—his mighty hand of providence, salvation, blessing—“that he may exalt you in due time; casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you.” “The mighty powers held under mighty control”—this is the greatest exhibition of power. Unrestraint is not the highest freedom. Young men must learn that self-restraint is the true power. Prov. 16:32—“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; And he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city.” Shakespeare, Coriolanus, 2:3—“We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do.” When dynamite goes off, it all goes off: there is no reserve. God uses as much of his power as he pleases: the remainder of wrath in himself, as well as in others, he restrains.

(c) Omnipotence in God does not exclude, but implies, the power of self-limitation. Since all such self-limitation is free, proceeding from neither external nor internal compulsion, it is the act and manifestation of God’s power. Human freedom is not rendered impossible by the divine omnipotence, but exists by virtue of it. It is an act of omnipotence when God humbles himself to the taking of human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.

Thomasius: “If God is to be over all and in all, he cannot himself be all.” Ps. 113:5, 6—“Who is like unto Jehovah our God.… That humbleth himself to behold The things that are in heaven and in the earth?” Phil. 2:7, 8—“emptied himself.… humbled himself.” see Charnock, Attributes, 2:5–107. President Woolsey showed true power when he controlled his indignation and let an offending student go free. Of Christ on the cross, says Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 116—“It was the power [to retain his life, to escape suffering], with the will to hold it unused, which proved him to be what he was, the obedient and perfect man.” We are likest the omnipotent One when we limit ourselves for love’s sake. The attribute of omnipotence is the ground of trust, as well as of fear, on the part of God’s creatures. Isaac Watts: “His every word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.”