The Big Argument: Does God Exist? by John Ashton & Michael Westacott

Author:John Ashton & Michael Westacott [Ashton, John & Westacott, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Theology / Apologetics, RELIGION / Religoin & Science
ISBN: 9781614580843
Publisher: Master Books
Published: 2006-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Eternal

We have already seen that God’s sovereignty means that He has the right and desire to do all His will, but we have not yet revealed how He carries this out. It stands to reason that a God who does "all his good pleasure" must have some way of accomplishing this — and indeed this is just what the Bible confirms. God is often called "the Almighty" (for example, Gen. 17:1), and Scripture often poses the question "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" frequently supplying the answer in spite of the question’s rhetorical nature (Gen. 18:14; Jer. 32:27; Jer. 32:17; Job 42:2; Matt. 19:26; Luke 1:37).

This attribute of God — what we call "omnipotence" — means that God is all-powerful; that is, He is able to perform all things that are proper acts of His power. This is an important qualification, since Scripture itself confirms some impossibilities with God. For instance, we are told "it is impossible for God to lie" (Heb. 6:18), that He "cannot be tempted by evil" (James 1:13), and that He "cannot deny himself" (2 Tim. 2:13; NASB). Upon further reflection, however, we see that these "impossibilities" do not constitute limitations of God’s omnipotence, because each one would be an act of weakness, not an act of power. Similarly, with questions such as "Can God make a rock so big that even He can’t lift it?" or "Can God make a triangle with only two corners, or a round square?" Obviously, none of these would be a true act of power. They would all be acts of nonsense.

The God who is both sovereign (He has the inclination to do whatever He pleases) and omnipotent (He has the ability to do whatever He pleases) is also all-knowing — what we call "omniscient." God’s omniscience means that God knows all actual and possible things. We are told specifically that God "knows everything" (1 John 3:20). We are warned that "nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight," but that "everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account" (Heb. 4:13). We are assured that in Jesus Christ are hidden "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3).

Notice that the idea of omniscience goes beyond knowing actual things (things that either have happened or will happen) to include all possible things based on contingencies (things that would certainly happen given hypothetical circumstances). One of the best examples of this is where Jesus tells us that if the miracles that were performed in Korazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum had been performed in Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom (a hypothetical situation that did not in fact happen), they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes (Matt. 11:21–24). In other words, Jesus affirms here that He knows not only actual events, but also events which certainly would have occurred had the conditions been right.

One might legitimately ask the question: Since God knew that these cities would have repented had

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