Omnipotence

“ Where no dead lie buried, where no resurrection will be, Omnipotence speaks to me this through His works, and thus I understand the doctrine of the omnipresence of God.
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All spirits are attracted by perfection. There may be deviations, but there is no exception to this, for all strive after the condition of the highest and freest exercise of their powers; all possess the common instinct of extending their sphere of action; of drawing all, and centring all in themselves; of appropriating all that is good, all that is acknowledged as charming and excellent. ”

“ To recognize Deity omnipotence is to enjoy security in your experience of cosmic citizenship, to possess assurance of safety in the long journey to Paradise. But to accept the fallacy of omnificence is to embrace the colossal error of Pantheism. ”

“ But so far as His system is concerned He possesses omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence; the love, the power, the wisdom, the glory, all are there in fullest measure. Yet He is a mighty Individual — a trinity in unity, and God in very truth, though removed by we know not how many stages from the Absolute, the Unknowable before which even solar systems are but as specks of cosmic dust. ”

“ Who is to say what matter can or cannot be made capable of doing when fearfully and wonderfully organized and vitalized by the creative hand of Omnipotence? What is it that feels, sees and hears in the horse--yea, what is it that thinks and retains thoughts, manifesting them in memory, in some animals, too, in a higher degree than in some men? Who will be presumptuous enough to assert that it is not matter? If it is anything besides matter in the animal then the mark is overreached again, in proving the animal in possession of an immateriality which is desired to be limited to man. ”

“ Such, because they are told that he is omnipotent, call him Omnipotence; when told that he is Love, do not care to argue that he must then be loving? But as to doing what he wills with a word—see what it cost him to redeem the world! ”

“ There is something ineffably ludicrous in the spectacle of a host of fat aldermen rushing out from their shops and offices to steady the tottering throne of Omnipotence. And what presumption on the part of these pigmies to undertake a defence of deity! Surely Omnipotence is as able to punish as Omniscience knows when to punish. The theologians who, as Matthew Arnold says, talk familiarly of God, as though he were a man living in the next street, are modest in comparison with his self-elected body-guard. ”

“ But perhaps it may be said, we have no instance of one mind governing more than one body. This may be, but the argument remains the same. With a proud spirit, that forgets its own contracted range of thought, and circumscribed knowledge, who is to limit the sway of Omnipotence? ”

“ Can He wield the elements, and control, at His pleasure, every work of His hands, but just the mind of man? Is the most noble work of God—that which is the most worthy of attention, and in reference to which all beside is upheld and governed—itself wholly unmanageable? Has Omnipotence formed minds, which, the moment they are made, escape from His hands, and defy the control of their Maker? Has the Almighty erected a moral kingdom which He cannot govern without destroying its moral nature? ”

“ He created the world; he can destroy it, and he can create it anew. We can conceive nothing too difficult for Omnipotence. This same omnipotent Being is the friend of man. Why then do we not come to him with confidence, and expect the utmost salvation of which our souls and bodies are capable? ”

“ Omnipotence, boundless choice of means and ends, illimitable wisdom, a benevolence that can not fail and can not err, are the conceded attributes of the being who is supposed to preside over the universe; and, however difficult it may be for us to express a conception of infinite power and infinite wisdom, as it is to describe infinite space and duration, we know what we mean to assume when we speak or think of faculties that are without limit, and of moral qualities that are subject to no imperfection. ”

“ But when, he continues, we consider not a created but a Divine Mind, the case is altered; for the idea of a Divine Mind includes omnipotence; and the idea of omnipotence does contain the idea of being able to move bodies. Thus it is the nature of omnipotence which renders the motion of bodies even by the Divine Mind credible or conceivable, while, so far as depended on the mere nature of mind, it would have been inconceivable and incredible. ”

“ Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. ”

“ To describe His omnipotence, we help ourselves by the 391graduated representation of three successions: Nothing, His Will, and Something. It is waste and empty; God calls on light; and there is light. If we had a real idea of His operative omnipotence we should be creators, as He.
Accordingly, every perfection which I perceive becomes my own; it gives me joy, because it is my own; I desire it, because I love myself. Perfection in nature is no property of matter, but of spirits. All spirits are happy through their perfection. I desire the happiness of all souls, because I love myself. ”

“ Our feeling of his omnipotence is not rendered stronger by the elevation of the complicated process; it is, on the contrary, the immediate succession of the object to the desire, which impresses the force of the omnipotence on our mind; and it is to the divine agency, therefore, that the representation of instant sequence seems peculiarly suited, as if it were more emphatically powerful. ”

“ Surely only omniscience and omnipotence can dispense with the moral and religious venture of our inspired common sense and its implied theistic faith, as the root of reason in man—in his intermediate place and office, between perfect knowledge and total ignorance. ”

“ But then as the omnipotence of God, though it acts suitably to the state of the creation, and the nature of causes and effects, which it first ordained, yet cannot be said to be founded upon the nature of causes and effects, because neither causes nor effects have any nature, but what they owe to omnipotence; so the infinite wisdom of God, though in giving laws to the world, it acts suitably to the natures and relations of rational beings, yet cannot be said to be founded upon such relations, because such relations are the effects of the divine wisdom, and owe their existence to it. ”

“ When we see this single, indivisible agent manifesting himself in such a manner as to give us the idea of unlimited power, we ascribe omnipotence to him, as an attribute. When we see a manifestation indicating infinite wisdom, we ascribe omniscience to him as an attribute. In the same manner in reference to the manifestations which indicate justice, goodness, mercy, truth, holiness, faithfulness, righteousness, kindness, &c., all of which we ascribe to him upon such indications. ”

“ While omniscience is the actual possession or exercise of all knowledge, omnipotence is universal ability, which may or may not yet have put forth all its energies, for what is possible to it may not have been effected by it. But Christ shall put forth His power, as we know from other sources, and death itself shall be swallowed up in victory—that which has swallowed up all humanity shall be surrounded by a wider vortex and be itself engulfed. ”

“ On the ground of an eternal perdition, such attribute as a moral omnipotence can truly be ascribed to God. The able writer to whom I have alluded has seen to the bottom of the difficulty, and believing as he does most sincerely in eternal suffering, believing also as he does with equal sincerity in the infinite love of God, he is compelled so far as the human will is concerned to circumscribe the sphere and action of divine omnipotence, or rather to deny it altogether. ”

“ Omnipotence might thus suspend natural law, but wisdom, so far as we can see, would not.
This third theory might well be held by those who see in nature no force but the all-working will of God. But the properties and powers of matter are revelations of the divine will, and the human will has only a relative independence in the universe. To desire that God would answer all our prayers is to desire omnipotence without omniscience. ”

“ To know that somebody has poetically imagined that it is possible, and has very likely been altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help. Moreover, the commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable. For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God. But power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to say, resistance. Without an object which resists it, it would be a blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence? ”

“ That is to say that a portion of the material world, through the mercy of God, is capable of receiving Very Being, and thus the phenomenon becomes Very Being externalised. But Omnipotence requires the total destruction of all phenomena and all multiplicity of the same substance. ”

“ THE THIRD LESSON THE CREATIVE WILL. In our first lesson of this series, we stated that among the other qualities and attributes that we were compelled, by the laws of our reason, to think that the Absolute possessed, was that of Omnipotence or All-Power. In other words we are compelled to think of the One as being the source and fount of all the Power there is, ever has been, or ever can be in the Universe. ”

“ Chapter VI But since it is better to have perception or to have omnipotence, to be pitiful or to be without passions, than not to have these attributes; how hast Thou perception, if Thou art not a body? or omnipotence, if Thou canst not do everything? or how art Thou at one and the same time pitiful and without passions? For if only bodily things have perception, since the senses with which we perceive belong and attach to the body; how canst Thou have perception, since Thou art not a body but the Supreme Spirit, which is higher than a body can be? ”

“ Omnipotence: By "Omnipotence" is meant all-powerfulness. This attribute is essential to all rational thinking upon God. We may not think upon God and then think upon him as being overruled by a higher power, and still have him remain to our thought as God. The Scriptures in their whole spirit present this view of the Omnipotence of Deity. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ”

“ I fully concede that natural phenomena and even the phenomena of the mind of man, only testify directly to the existence of a power adequate to their production, and that we cannot directly infer from them the presence of omnipotence. ”

“ It grows out of the doctrine of motives, it springs from the idea of the entire dependence of the human mind for each and all its volitions upon the directing influence of Omnipotence, whatever may be the theory by which that influence is explained. ”

“ For genuine omniscience and omnipotence are only to be realised in the control of free beings, and in inducing the divine image in them by moral influences instead of metaphysical and physical agencies: that is, by final instead of efficient causation. ”

“ Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and immateriality, are all words which designate properties and powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded. ”

“ We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when admitting that God, or Good, is omnipresent, and has The sole governor. all-power, yet that there is another power, named evil. This belief, that there is more than one mind, is as pernicious to divine theology as are ancient mythology and pagan idolatry. ”

“ Omnipotence needs no minister, and is not exhausted or wearied by the cares of a universe. Power in action is more truly sublime than power in repose; and surely it is not derogatory to divine [Pg 51] energy to sustain and continue that which it was certainly not beneath divine wisdom to create and appoint. Rightly considered, to guide the falling of a leaf from a tree is an office as worthy of omnipotence, as the creation of a world. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? ”

“ For if the order of nature could lead to a conception of divine power higher or worthier than the conception offered by theology, it would lead to a conception of divine power greater and higher than omnipotence; for omnipotence is one of the attributes of the God of theology. ”

“ And as the divine power has some degree of likeness to human power, yet with an infinite difference from it: so that perfection which we call reason in God, has some degree of likeness to reason as it is in man, yet is infinitely and beyond all conception different from it.
* And as our enjoyment of power is so limited, so imperfect, so superficial, as to be scarce sufficient to tell us, what power is, much less what omnipotence is ”

“ But both in its practical pretensions and in its theoretical despair it seems to me to go too far. Most of what is greatest in man is called forth in response to the thwarting of his hopes by immutable natural obstacles; by the pretence of omnipotence, he becomes trivial and a little absurd. ”

“ It is at the change of the century that we first come upon this strange incongruity, a personality who is a sort of god and ruler in the spiritual world, whose capacity of feeling is such that by means of it he draws into his own life the whole life of the universe, the demand of whose heart is a demand for omnipotence (for omnipotence he must have in order to transform the cold, hard world into a world after his own heart) , and who, along with all this, is—what? ”