One may also consider the other attributes of God, holiness, for example, which by their very nature are of the essence of God and therefore necessarily exhibit a positive thrust and negative inviolability, which can be neither resisted nor overcome. When God is referred to as Spirit, it is modern usage to think of His invisibility, but to those who thought of Spirit as wind, there was a sense of a penetrating, overpowering force, more like the use of the term “energy” in our day. The repeated title, “Lord of Hosts,” meant supremacy of power to the Heb. ’Ēlōhĩm, emphasizes the fullness of power in God ’Ēl Shadday outlines the might of God ’Abhir is the Strong One. those used in the OT ( see Names of God). Some have found help to the understanding of omnipotence in the names of God, esp. The omnipotence of God is a fearful thing and an awful thing in the strict sense of such words at the same time it is the ground of blessing and salvation. The Calvinistic term “irresistible grace” may emphasize “irresistible” only when one understands “grace” which is the constant expression of the love of God toward His creatures. On the basis that God’s omnipotence is controlled by love, His almighty power becomes a ground for confident trust. Although it is true, as Christ said, that He is able to “raise up children unto Abraham” out of the stones of the street, He has not done so. God’s omnipotence is in no sense a pantheistic attribute omnipotence is not automatic but willful. It may never be said that He is a slave of His own omnipotence: men live in a personal not a deterministic system, and therefore they have freedom to act as individuals because He has restraint. God has power over His power which is always under His wise and holy will. One cannot hold that He exercises all of His power all the time and in every place ( see Omnipresence). God suffers no internal or external compulsion. The power of God implies the power of self-limitation. The question as to how sin entered into the world is not a question of His omnipotence as much as it is a means of illustrating how an allpowerful God can create a system in which sin is possible and at the same time, because of His omnipotence, make the wrath of man to serve Him. He cannot pretend that what has happened has not happened. More to the point, and more personally, He can in no way contradict His own nature by sinning or dying. Intellectual tricks, raising questions as to whether God can draw a shorter than a straight line between two points or make a weight so heavy that He Himself cannot lift it, do not belong in any serious discussion of omnipotence. There is no nonsense in the omnipotence as there is no nonsense in God: He cannot do that which is self-contradictory or contradictory to His own nature, because His omnipotence is of His own essence, and He is all-Being out of which all existence must arise. It is well to observe that omnipotence in God does not imply the power to do those things which in no way can be thought of as objects of power. There is nothing accidental or incidental, and the thought of “omnipotence” merges easily into “omnipresence” and “omniscience.” Nothing evades God’s omnipotence ( Dan 4:35 Amos 9:2, 3) and even the most minute things such as the falling sparrow or the hairs of our head are under His personal control ( Matt 10:30 Luke 12:7). In God resides the power to produce and control everything that comes to pass. It is known in concrete acts, acts indeed of overreaching and overpowering inclusiveness: in creation, nature, history, providence, and redemption. One may observe, therefore, the definition of omnipotence by its manifestations. He even has the power to create new things after His first creation ( Matt 3:9 Rom 4:17), according to His pleasure, and nothing is impossible to Him ( Gen 18:14). God is described as performing natural wonders ( Gen 1:1-3 Isa 44:24 Heb 1:3) and spiritual wonders ( 2 Cor 4:6 Eph 1:9 3:20). That the Bible does not use the abstract term, is simply characteristic of Biblical language and thought forms, for in the “mighty acts” themselves is explicitly evident, for all who accept such acts as “revelatory,” what might be more calmly or academically expressed in a word like omnipotence. always is rendered “Almighty.” The concept, however, is a necessary implication from God’s mighty acts which show no limits in prestige (over other gods, for example), power, or extent. Bible, nor is there any noun corresponding to it in the original Gr.
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