[lit-ideas] Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence (was: Re: 9th edition of the EB)

  • From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:45:12 -0600

wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:
. . . .I believe that "morality"/"immorality" cannot apply to an omniscient, omnipotent being. So whatever you were doing at the time, you could not possibly have been writing about the immorality of God.
Precisely! There are three traditional "attributes" given to God in medieval philosophy: Omnipotence and Omniscience are two. The third is sometimes called "omnibenevolence." There is no real logical difficulty if one takes two of the three, but taking all three together has led to all kinds of books and papers. If one steps back and looks at the denominational approach, I think the Roman Catholic tradition tries to rescue "omnibenevolence" by seeing "omnipotence" as not literally "all -powerful" because even God can't make 3 greater than 5, and (more importantly) God can't make something bad into something good. His "benevolence" is more central to his identity than his power. The reformation focused more on God's omnipotence, making ethics more a matter of divine comnand than natural law because God did have the power to turn all commandments upside down, if he wished. The power is more central than the benevolence.
Why am I bringing this up? Because despite the narrow logical arguments about this, the issue is one that still runs under many theological differences between Christian denominations, and even among "ex-" Christians. (One can't freely choose what one NO LONGER believes; it's a given.) So "Protestant" ex-believers still focus more on God's power, and "Catholic" ex-believers still focus more on God's goodness. Of course this takes the form of a rejection of that attribute, but the one they are rejecting can only be the one they were raised to value most. 


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"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and ignorance." ------------------------------------------------- 
John Wager                john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
                                  Lisle, IL, USA


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