Omnipotence

The word comes from two Latin words: omnis, meaning “all,” and potens, meaning “powerful.” Omnipotent means “all-powerful.”

The King James Bible uses the word one time, in Revelation 19:6: “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” The Greek word behind it is παντοκράτωρ (pantokrator), “the one who holds power over all things.” The Old Testament says much the same thing with the name אֵל שַׁדַּי (El Shaddai), “God Almighty” (Genesis 17:1).

The idea is simple. Nothing and no one can stop God from doing what He decides to do. Job said it in one line: “I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee” (Job 42:2).

“Cannot” is the wrong word

People often explain this word with a list of things God cannot do. He cannot lie. He cannot sin. He cannot stop being God.

The idea is right. The wording is not, and the wrong wording paints a wrong picture.

“Cannot” points to something stopping you. I cannot lift a car. Gravity and weak arms settle that, and both of them are outside of me. But nothing is outside of God. No rule stands over Him. No force pushes back at Him. If you find yourself picturing God straining against a wall, throw the picture out. There is no wall.

Say it this way instead: God will not lie. God will not sin. And His “will not” is far more certain than our “cannot.” A man who cannot do a thing this year may manage it the next. God never shifts. “I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).

Then why does the Bible say “cannot”?

Because the Bible does say it. Titus 1:2 speaks of “God, that cannot lie.” Second Timothy 2:13 says “he cannot deny himself.” Hebrews 6:18 calls it “impossible for God to lie,” using the Greek word ἀδύνατον (adynaton), “not possible.”

Read those verses the way the writers meant them. They are not saying a chain holds God back. They are saying the opposite. Lying sits so far outside of who God is that it will never happen, not once, not ever. Look at what Hebrews 6:18 is actually arguing: that a promise from God is the safest thing in the world. The writer is bragging on God, not listing a weakness.

Augustine, writing around AD 400, said it well. Calling God unable to die or be fooled does not make Him smaller. Being able to fail would make Him smaller.

Trick questions

Someone will eventually ask: can God make a rock so heavy He cannot lift it?

The question sounds deep. It is a word trick, the same as a square circle or a married bachelor. The words cancel each other out, so together they describe nothing at all. There is no such rock. There is nothing to make and nothing to lift.

Some people hear that answer and start thinking logic is a rule that sits above God and tells Him what He may do. It does not. Logic is not a fence around God. It describes the way a perfectly steady mind works, and God’s mind is perfectly steady. When we say a thing cannot be both true and false at the same time, we are describing God’s own consistency, which He built into the world He made. The order runs from Him outward, never the other way.

Where Christians disagree

Every Christian group teaches that God is all-powerful. They divide over a different question: does being all-powerful mean God causes everything that happens?

Reformed, or Calvinist, named after John Calvin, a French preacher of the 1500s. God holds complete control over every event, down to the smallest detail. John Frame, a well-known Reformed writer, defines omnipotence itself as complete and total control over everything. Nothing is loose. Nothing is random. Even sinful choices fall inside God’s plan, and He turns them toward good ends. Reformed writers point to Ephesians 1:11, that God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” and to Acts 2:23, where the men who killed Christ acted by “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”

Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. God is able to do everything that can truly be done, and He holds every moment of creation in place. But being able to do a thing is not the same as doing it. God permits much that He does not cause. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 1200s, taught that evil is a lack rather than a thing God makes, and that God’s power shows in bringing good out of evil instead of being its source.

Arminian and Wesleyan, named after Jacob Arminius, a Dutch pastor of the early 1600s, and John Wesley, who founded the Methodists. God holds all power and never loses a bit of it. But He holds some of it back on purpose, so that people can make real choices and real love becomes possible. Holding back is not weakness. A man who could shout and chooses to whisper is not weak; he has decided. They point to verses where God sets a choice in front of people, such as “I have set before you life and death… therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19), and to Christ over Jerusalem: “how often would I have gathered thy children together… and ye would not” (Matthew 23:37).

All three agree that God’s power has no limit. The argument is not about how much power God has. It is about how He has chosen to use it.