It is never wise to begin
a sentence with the words,
“God cannot _____
(fill in the blank) .”
God is Omnipotent, that
is He is all powerful. He can do whatever He wills to do.
Luke 1:37
“For with God nothing will be impossible.” Cf.
Jeremiah 32:17
For example, Muslims will
claim that because some Christians claim:
“(The Christian) God
cannot lie.”
that this proves that
their God Allah is greater than the (One and Only True) God of
Christianity because their God Allah can lie and that he can contradict
himself.
In order to show that the
One True and only God, the Christian understanding of God, is greater
than the Muslim view of God we need to be careful how we phrase our
expressions.
Clearly God, the One True
God of Christianity, never lies or contradicts Himself, but saying
“God cannot lie.”
implies, at least in the minds of many, that God is limited and is NOT
all powerful. When we do speak that way others, especially Muslims, are
inclined to misinterpret us and think that we are either denying God’s
omnipotence or describing a God who is somehow less than the Muslim view
of God.
It is better to reply that God freely chooses not
to lie.
See “Can God Lie?”
For example, if we choose
to use the following words :
“God is limited by the
laws of logic and therefore a Holy God cannot lie”
the Muslim will be
inclined to misinterpret us and think that we believe in the heretical
opinion that God is somehow restricted by something outside of Himself.
And perhaps even more importantly, the Muslim will mistakenly think his
(version or understanding of) God is greater than the Christian God.
Instead, we need to point
out that language and human thought have limitations. By analogy
consider mathematics. If we attempt to divide by zero we end up with
all kinds of contradictions. Therefore, we cannot divide by zero. It
is undefined nonsense if we do.
When confronted with
question like,
“Can God make a stone
too heavy for Him to lift?”
we should not answer the
question in the affirmative or the negative. Neither a “Yes” nor a “No”
is really adequate. The problem is with the question itself. The
question contains a self-contradiction. The impossibility lies not
within the capabilities of God’s omnipotence, but within the self
contradictory nature of thing proposed.
And God freely chose to
make a world that is ordered to logic and truth where those concepts
have actual meaning for us.
Just as trying to divide
by zero produces nonsensical results, the questions above are proposing
meaningless nonsense.
Just because some people
can put words together that doesn’t mean their words make sense.
Consider the following statement :
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