Omnipotence & Goodness

I recently watched an interview with a well-known American pastor wherein he was asked “Whether God is all powerful but doesn’t care about the people of Japan, or cares about the people of Japan and isn’t all powerful.” Sadly, the respondent first evaded a response, and then stumbled in giving one. His answer, apparently, was an acknowledgement of the apparent paradox without any further clarification. I would ask immediately for clarification of the terms “all-powerful” and “cares.” If all-powerful means what the Church has traditionally distinguished in saying Pater Omnipotens, then I would say there is no question at all; the omnipotence of God is an unquestioned essential attribute. If however, the interviewer is asking whether prefixing nonsense sentences with the phrase “God can” makes them less nonsense, I would answer that he mixing a semantic puzzle with a theological one. For example, debating the statement that “God can create square circles” is a different specimen of logic than the statement “God can create ex nihilo.” The latter is a real description of a real idea. The former is no more meaningful than saying “God can red jabberwocky please.” The question of God’s omnipotence in this world always really turns out to be a question of how much God chooses to limit is sovereignty. The Calvinists lacked the creativity to conceive of a world with free will. Apparently Dr. Kushner is unable to conceive of a world with anything but free will. The orthodox Christian, more sanely, recognizes that some states have a sovereign king but also a local legislature. It is impossible for us in any meaningful way to conceive of a world in which free will plays a real part without a sovereign God choosing, in some way, to withdraw some of his omnipotence. This does not mean that he is not omnipotent, but simply that He chose, as is His habit, to His creation meaningful.

I am also curious to know what is meant by questioning God’s “care” for the people of Japan. I should state from the front that I do not suspect this destruction to be any measure of “judgement” upon the country other than lot given to each of us: to taste and succumb to Death. If God’s “care” consists of sparing us from Death, I would smile and answer that the answer to that is another paradox; that we shall endure it and rise from it; but there is no question about enduring it, whether that be at 5 or 85, whether it be from a tsunami or from cancer or in peaceful sleep. I, who have suffered extraordinarily little, perhaps have little right to speak about such things in the midst of the real grief which is being suffered. Yet I would state emphatically that God’s care for humanity has very seldom resembled some of the things that are really being mourned: the collapsed highways, the homes, and the dirt. This is a wild world that he gave us, and our efforts to tame it, while admirable, are not His. I suspect God’s care for us consists much more in waking us up to our real condition (by which a tsunami might be an effective tool) than in providing us with comfortable houses and impressive public works. The images being so glibly broadcast on television news are disturbing, but very few of them have to do with mourning our mortality; they are much more about mourning the mortality of our works. Does God care for the people of Japan? Certainly. Does he care for their beach houses? That is much harder to say. And there is certainly little to be said for His culpability in the danger visited them by their own construction of a bomb.

Finished Iliad 3 today, and currently reading Is. 56, Matt 7, Epist Liv, and A Mere Interlude. This will be a busy week for J and I, what with a recital of mine (pops Trumpet music) on Thurs, her Hanover Concerto performance on Sunday, and then RPO the following week for me. We hosted a friend of hers and her soon-to-be fiancé over the weekend with much good discussion but little rest. Congratulations to the RSC Chorale for a fine performance yesterday!