Understanding omnipotence

Abstract

An omnipotent being would be a being whose power was unlimited. The power of human beings is limited in two distinct ways: we are limited with respect to our freedom of will, and we are limited in our ability to execute what we have willed. These two distinct sources of limitation suggest a simple definition of omnipotence: an omnipotent being is one that has both perfect freedom of will and perfect efficacy of will. In this article we further explicate this definition and show that it escapes the standard objections to divine omnipotence.

Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency

“…Alexander Pruss and I have argued that perfect efficacy of will is one component of omnipotence (Pearce and Pruss 2012). (The other component is perfect freedom.)…”

Two Omnipotent Beings?

“…For example, Pearce and Pruss (2012), Świętorzecka (2011) state that the will of an omnipotent being is such that, if the omnipotent being wants something, that something is actualized:…”

“…To avoid these problems, Pearce and Pruss (2012) add another condition 4 : the will of the omnipotent being is perfect. Many different insights are included in the idea of perfect will.…”

“…The emphasis on the perfect will is exploited by Pearce and Pruss (2012) to exclude, among other things, the possibility that God can want evil: a perfect will only wants good states of affairs. Among the conditions ϕ which p must satisfy in (W2), there is also the condition that p must be good.…”

Wierenga on theism and counterpossibles

“…Others, such as Pearce and Pruss (2012), have even relied on nonvacuism to develop certain accounts of important theistic doctrines, such as divine omnipotence. Accordingly, a counterpossible is a subjunctive conditional, or counterfactual, of the form "if it were the case that p, it would be the case that q", with an impossible antecedent.…”