God's Power

[How God’s omnipotence should be understood. ]

That God is omnipotent has already been suffiCiently demonstrated. Here we shall attempt only to explain in brief how this attribute is to be understood; for many speak of it without proper piety and not according to truth. They say that, by their own nature and not from God’s decree, some things are possible, some things impossible, and some things necessary, and that God’s omnipotence is concemed only with the possible. We,

however, who have already shown that all things depend absolutely on God’s decree, say that God is omnipotent. But having understood that he has decreed some things from the mere freedom of his will, and then that he is immutable, we say now that he cannot act against his own decrees, and that this is impossible simply because it is at variance with God’s perfection.

[All things are necessary with respect to God’s decree. It is wrong to say that some things are necessary in themselves, and other things with respect to his decree.]

But perhaps someone will argue that some things we find necessary only wh ile having regard for God’s decree, while on the other hand some things we find necessary without regard for God’s decree. Take, for example, that Josiah bumed the bones of the idolaters on the altar of Jeroboam. 12 If we attend only to Josiah’s will, we shall regard the event as a possible one, and in no way having necessarily to happen except from the prophet’s having predicted it from God’s decree. But that the three angles of a triangle must be equal to two right angles is something that manifests itself.

But surely these people are inventing distinctions in things from their own ignorance. For if men clearly understood the whole order of Nature, they would find all things to be equally as necessary as are the things treated in mathematics. But because this is beyond the reach of human knowledge, certain things are judged by us as possible and not as necessary. Therefore we must say either that God is powerless-because all things are in actual fact necessary- or that God is all-powerful, and that the necessity we find in things has resulted solely from God’s decree.

[If God had made the nature of things other than it is, he would also have had to give us a different intellect. ] Suppose the question is now raised: What if God had decreed things otherwise and had rendered false those things that are now true? Would we still not accept them as quite true? I answer, yes indeed, if God had left us with the nature that he has given us. But he might then, had he so wished, have also given us a nature-as is now the case-such as to enable us to understand Nature and its laws, as they would have been laid down by God. Indeed, if we have regard to his faithfulness, he would have had to do so.

This is also evident from the fact, as we have previously stated, that the whole of Natura naturata is nothing but a unique entity, from which it follows that man is a part of Nature that must cohere with the rest. Therefore from the simplicity of God’s decree it would also follow that if God had created things in a different way, he would likewise have also so constituted our nature that we could understand things as they had been created by God. So although we want to retain the same distinction in God’s power as is commonly adopted by philosophell>, we are nevertheless constrained to expound it in a different way. [The divisions of Gad’s power-absolute, ordered, ordinary, and extraordinary. ] We therefore divide God’s power into Ordered and Absolute. We speak of God’s absolute power when we consider his omnipotence without regard to his decrees. We speak of his ordered power when we have regard to his decrees.

Then there is a further division into the Ordinary and Extraordinary power of God. His ordinary power is that by which he preserves the world in a fixed order.

We mean his extraordinary power when he acts beyond Nature’s orders-for example, all miracles, such as the ass speaking, the appearance of angels, and the like.

Yet concerning this latter power we may not unreasonably entertain serious doubts, because for God to govern the world with one and the same fixed and immutable order seems a greater miracle than if, because of the folly of mankind, he were to abrogate laws that he himself has sanctioned in Nature in the best way and from pure freedom-as nobody can deny unless he is quite blinded. But we shall leave this for the theologians to decide.

Finally, we pass over other questions commonly raised concerning God’s power: Does God’s power extend to the past? Can he improve on the things that he does?

Can he do many other things than he has done? Answers to these questions can readily be suppl ied from what has already been said.