For it is according to the condition of the proximate cause that the effect has contingency or necessity, as was shown above (I:14:1 ad 2). Those things, however, which are of such kind as to be done by inferior causes are said to be possible in reference to those inferior causes. Hence those things which it belongs to God alone to do immediately-as, for example, to create, to justify, and the like-are said to be possible in reference to a higher cause. But the possible in reference to some power is named possible in reference to its proximate cause. " The absolute possible is not so called in reference either to higher causes, or to inferior causes, but in reference to itself. Thomas Aquinas affirms that God's omnipotence is based on the realization of acts in the absolute possible, but this does not include absolute impossibility. The concern of the scholastics, before classifying power, is to make sense. As nothing is the absence of being, the everything has nothing included and therefore being able to do "everything" does not include the realization of contradictions. Proponents of this position argue that just as contradictions can never be part of reality, they can not be considered entities - they are literally nothing.
Thomas Aquinas is known for his gigantic work Summa Theologiæ, in which he made various objections to God, and answered all of them.Ĭonsidering also the classical view of omnipotence, they argues that God could accomplish only what is logically possible, thus not violating the principles of classical logic. One of his most notable supporters was the friar, philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, considered one of the fathers of the Catholic church and one of the greatest theologians of all time. The scholastic omnipotence is "logical" omnipotence, which is most defended in theology. The following will go into a little more detail on each side.
The best known of such is the paradox of stone.įrom this point of view, various aspects have emerged in the attempt to invalidate such paradoxes or point out other definitions for omnipotence, the main and most defended of these views being the scholastic side presented by Thomas Aquinas in his compiled Summa Theologiæ. Since the advent of classical atheism, several paradoxes have been developed, pointing to the presence of logical inconsistencies – contradictions – in this attribute, many of them concluding that it is impossible for real omnipotence to exist. The main religions whose God is omnipotent are the Abrahamic religions. This divine quality would be the possibility of having in itself the ability to do all things. Omnipotence is from the beginnings of monotheism, an incommunicable attribute of God, usually accompanied by other attributes – Omniscience and Omnipresence.
0 kommentar(er)
