Paradox of Omnipotence

Formulation of the Paradox

The Paradox of Omnipotence (often illustrated by the Paradox of the Stone) is a classical challenge to the coherence of the concept of an omnipotent being, most commonly the God of traditional theism. It is typically framed as a question: “Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?”

If the answer is yes, then there is something the being cannot do—namely, lift the stone—so it is not omnipotent. If the answer is no, then there is something the being cannot do—create such a stone—so it is also not omnipotent. Either way, the argument seems to conclude that omnipotence is self-contradictory or at least conceptually problematic.

Formally, the paradox trades on a very strong reading of omnipotence: that an omnipotent being can do any task whatsoever, including tasks that involve contradictions or self-limitation. The paradox then proposes a self-referential task, seemingly forcing omnipotence to defeat itself.

Historical Background

Concerns about the coherence of unlimited power appear in both classical and medieval philosophy. While no single thinker is universally credited with “originating” the paradox, related issues arise in:

• Late antique and medieval Christian philosophy, including discussions by figures such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, who debated whether God could do the logically impossible (e.g., make a square circle).
• Medieval Islamic theology and philosophy, where thinkers such as al-Ghazālī and Avicenna discussed divine power and whether it extended to contradictions.
• Scholastic debates, where questions like “Can God undo the past?” or “Can God make a stone He cannot lift?” were used to probe the boundaries of divine omnipotence.

The specific stone formulation—asking whether God can make a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it—became especially popular in early modern and contemporary philosophy of religion, and is now the most familiar version of the paradox in introductory discussions.

Major Responses and Interpretations

Philosophers and theologians have offered a variety of responses, which can be grouped into several broad strategies.

1. Restricting Omnipotence to the Logically Possible

A widely held response defines omnipotence as the ability to do all logically possible things, not to bring about contradictions. On this view, tasks like “creating a square circle” or “making 2 + 2 = 5” are not genuine tasks at all; they are pseudo-tasks because they involve a contradiction. Similarly, creating a stone that an omnipotent being cannot lift is construed as logically incoherent.

Proponents argue that once omnipotence is carefully defined in this way, the paradox dissolves: the question asks whether an omnipotent being can perform something that, on analysis, is not a coherent state of affairs. Thus, the limitation is not on the being but on the conceptual space of what counts as a possible task.

Critics, however, contend that this response may weaken the intuitive notion of omnipotence or smuggle in substantive metaphysical assumptions about logic and possibility.

2. Self-Limitation and Changing Power

Another response allows that an omnipotent being could limit its own power—by, for example, irrevocably binding itself or creating conditions it cannot change. On this reading, the omnipotent being has the power to cease to be omnipotent. It might, at one time, be able to create a stone it later cannot lift, without this undermining its earlier omnipotence.

Advocates of this view suggest that omnipotence concerns what a being can do at a given time, not what it must always be able to do. In this way, the paradox is defused by distinguishing between temporary omnipotence and permanent omnipotence.

Opponents argue that this undermines the traditional theological claim that God is essentially omnipotent, i.e., omnipotent in every possible circumstance and at all times.

3. Logical Reformulations

Some philosophers attempt to reformulate the paradox in terms of quantified modal logic or more precise notions of ability and power. They distinguish:

• Simple ability claims: “X can lift any possible stone.”
• Self-referential tasks: tasks that involve the being’s own power “from the outside,” such as “producing a state in which X cannot do what it now can.”

On these accounts, the paradox is seen as arising from ambiguities in the notion of “can” and in quantifying over all possible tasks, including ones that change the very terms under which the quantification was made. The paradox is thus treated more like a semantic or logical puzzle than a fatal problem for omnipotence.

4. Skeptical and Atheistic Uses

Some philosophers and critics of theism treat the paradox as evidence that the traditional concept of God is incoherent. If omnipotence is among the essential attributes of God, and the very idea of omnipotence is contradictory, then, they argue, the concept of such a God is logically impossible, not merely empirically unsupported.

In this vein, the omnipotence paradox is often invoked alongside other classic issues, such as the Problem of Evil, to challenge the consistency of the traditional package of divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and so forth.

Defenders of theism reply by adopting one or more of the above strategies, or by suggesting that human conceptual resources may be limited relative to the divine nature, so that apparent paradoxes might reflect our cognitive limitations rather than genuine contradictions in reality.

Philosophical Significance

The Paradox of Omnipotence plays several important roles in philosophy:

• In philosophy of religion, it is a primary test case for the coherence of theism, forcing precise definitions of attributes like omnipotence and clarifying what is meant by “divine power.”
• In metaphysics and logic, the paradox highlights issues about possible vs. impossible tasks, the status of contradictions, and the limits of modal concepts such as “can,” “able,” and “power.”
• In theology, it shapes doctrinal accounts of what God can and cannot do, and continues to influence debates about miracles, divine freedom, and the nature of divine self-limitation.

The status of the paradox remains controversial. Many philosophers maintain that suitably refined definitions of omnipotence avoid contradiction, while others hold that the notion of an all-powerful being is inherently unstable. As a result, the Paradox of Omnipotence continues to function as a central, instructive puzzle in discussions of divine attributes and the boundaries of logical and metaphysical possibility.