God's omnipotence and St. Thomas Aquinas

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Guilherme123 said:
Titus 1:2 In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
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Maybe think of it this way, God has the power to lie, but would not do it.

When you own a gun, you have the power to shoot someone. It would be good to think that a gun owner could say, I cannot shoot another person, even though I have the power to.
 
Guilherme123 said:
“Nothing is impossible to God”, according to the Bible, so why doens’t he make the intrinsically impossible capable of production?
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Because by its very nature, something which is intrinsically impossible cannot exist. You cannot create a circle with four corners, that would be a square. It is something which cannot exist period because it would violate the nature of the thing to exist. By existing it would violate itself and be something that it is not.

God is a rational being, and is therefore still limited by what is rational. A concept like a square circle is inherently irrational, its existence is precluded by the nature of what both a square and a circle are. As such, God cannot create them. This is not a limitation, as it is not ontologically possible for these things to exist. It is saying God is lesser because He is not capable of doing something that cannot be done, this is not true because it would never be possible for the thing to be done to begin with, so God is not lesser for being unable to do it. It is my understanding that Muslims believe that God is capable of this sort of irrationality, however it does not stand up to scrutiny because it would require God to violate His very nature.

Omnipotence means that God is capable of doing all things which are rationally possible. It was never intended to say that He could create something which violates rationality, because that would be a violation of God’s nature as a rational being.
 
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Eric_Hyom said:
Maybe think of it this way, God has the power to lie, but would not do it.
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No, He cannot. It is literally impossible for Him to lie. A lie is an evil, which is a deprivation of the Good. Since God is the source and fullness of all Good, the only way God could lie would be to deprive Himself of Himself, which is impossible.
 
lelinator said:
We don’t make a conscious decision about who or what we love
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You might want to say what your definition of love is.

I suspect you mean the emotion; as St. Paul tells us differently, and his definition is absolutely about free will.
 
this thread harkens back to the college freshman course in theology/philosophy with the age old question: “Can God make a rock so big He cannot move it?”.
 
otjm said:
You might want to say what your definition of love is.
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Actually the relevant definition is the one to which people are referring when they claim that “without free will, love isn’t possible”. In such an assertion, exactly what is meant by “love”? If it’s not the standard emotional definition, then to what other definition are they referring?
 
The reference would be, among others and perhaps better than any:

1 Cor 13:4: Love is patient, Love is kind. Love is not boastful or envious or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

In short, love is choosing; and it is a choice made for the other as against a choice made for self (aka a selfish choice).

You will notice that nothing of St. Paul’s statement has to do with emotion; it is all about choosing to do good and being other directed rather than self directed. That is why it is said that love is self-giving.

Emotions are most definitely not self giving; they are all about self and how the self feels.
 
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otjm said:
In short, love is choosing; and it is a choice made for the other as against a choice made for self (aka a selfish choice).
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Is love choosing to act for the benefit of the other, or is love the reason why one chooses to act for the benefit of the other?

In other words, does the emotional love…which we don’t consciously choose…come first? And acting toward the benefit of the other is merely an outward expression of that love?

Or are you implying that the act itself constitutes love, regardless of the underlying motivation?
 
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Love is an act of the will.
lelinator said:
In other words, does the emotional love…which we don’t consciously choose…come first?
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When I love my enemy, there is no emotion of “love”. It is far easier to have a positive act of the will for someone I like, or someone I may be emotionally “in love” with, than for someone I dislike, or am completely ambiguous about.

I choose to love another - which is separate and apart from an emotional involvement with them (which could be seen as positive, neutral, or may be seen as negative).
 
otjm said:
When I love my enemy, there is no emotion of “love”.
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Actually there is, in your case it’s your love of God, which expresses itself in your obedience to Christ’s command to love your enemies. Along with charity, one of the hallmarks of love is obedience. So although it may often seem as though love isn’t a motivating factor in our charitable actions, it actually is. It’s either the love of the self, the love of the other, or as in this case, the love of God.

P.S Sometimes the love of the self masquerades as the love of God.
 
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Everything you spoke of is a choice, not an emotion.

I may have an emotionin my relationshp to God, but emotion is not my driving force in loving God; choice is.

Ask any parent who has lost a child. What drives them to love God (to choose God) is choice which flies in the face of their loss.
 
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otjm said:
I may have an emotionin my relationshp to God, but emotion is not my driving force in loving God; choice is.
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So then you’re saying that love can indeed be forced. You can force yourself to have an emotional love for God simply by choosing to do so.
 
Not forced. Chosen in spite of really strong emotions.

Have you been married?
 
A logical contradidtion is a nothing, It is no thing,
And, to quote Frank Sheed, Nothing IS impossible to God.
 
Well, I can’t speak for the Pope, but I have met one priest who had been married (his wife died), and know another who was married and divorced before ordination.

Anyway the question I was going to ask does not apply to you.
 
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