Where does the idea that God is infinitely powerful come from? Is there refference within the Christian Bible to this?
Is there a difference between
All Powerful,
Omnipotent,
and Infinitely Powerful?
Cheers, Bippy
Luke 1:37 says “nothing is impossible with God”; there is also quite a bit in the Psalms to the effect of the unsurpassed greatness and power of the Lord. It may be true, though, that the writers did not have in mind an immovable burrito and an irresistable bowl of green pea soup when they put pen to paper.
Thanks Mangetout is there any indecation of what “nothing is impossible with God” would mean in Luke’s time. Is this like the common enough saying belief “If you try hard enough you can do anything you want” or does this imply such things as God creating a four sided triangle? or is this interpretation completely open?
I am interested in the use of “unsurpassed greatness” since this does not directly imply infinite greatness, but just the highest value of greatness that exists (or maybe the highest value of greatness that can exist – which is still not necessarily infinite).
Cheers, Bippy
Certainly my reading of the Bible leads me to believe that its writers largely considered God to be an entity who could (not necessarily would) do any ‘thing’ and that this entity is the most powerful being in existence, but I can’t find a great deal of support (either in my heart or in the Bible) for the idea that god can do ‘things’ which are not even ‘things’ - making a four-sided triangle is a logical impossibility, a non-‘thing’.
The quotation from Luke was in the context of God enabling Elizabeth to become the mother of John the baptist when she was (allegedly) infertile. Not an ‘infinite’ by any means, I think.
I think the most useful definition of omnipotence is the ability to do any ‘thing’ that can be done, avoiding all those immovable/irresistable traps.
To tack onto Mangetout’s comment, it’s understood that God can’t alter the nature of a thing. For example, it’s impossible to make a square circle (although God could make a square INTO a circle, he can’t change x into y while still allowing it to be x).
So…
If within this universe it is impossible to travel faster than speed of light. And this impossibility is true for anything that can exist within this universe. Then would it damage anyones faith in God if God could not cause anything within this universe to travel faster than the speed of light within this universe? (Lots of careful wording in that last two long sentances).
ie God creates universe with rule nothing can go faster than speed of light. Can God be bound by his own rules?
Maybe God could create a different universe with different rules, maybe God could change the rules in this universe, but could God break his own rules, I wonder.
I suppose God would be personally bound by the rules of the universe only if he was constrained within it, perhaps not even then. As far as moving something faster than light is concerned, hmmm, how about disappearring it and recreating it two Planck lengths away in less than two Planck moments?
Can God break his own rules? Certainly the creation account in Genesis seems to paint that picture (speaking things into existence and all that), not to mention artificially aging the Earth so that it looks like it formed millions of years ago by entirely natural processes - you can’t play tricks like that without breaking a rule or two.
Well disappearing and reappearing an object (perhapse using different dimensions) would not violate the speed of light limitl. Certainly Genisis if litteraly true would break several of what we believe to be laws of the Universe. But if God did this from ‘outside’ of the Universe then no laws internal to the Universe would need to be broken becuse ‘outside’ the Universe God would not be subject to his law of causality. But since Genisis as written in the Christia bible seems to be a rehash of several other creation myths (according to commenterys in my Oxford Bible Companion) it is unlikely to be a comletely true account of what happened in the creation of the Universe.
God ‘outside’ the Universe, would also be outside time as we know it, so a day in respect to God is not necessarily linked in any way to a day with respect to our Universe. Even the order of Days need not be the same.
Cheers, Bippy, and thanks for the replies…
Isn’t a pyramid a four-sided triangle? 
As for God’s omnipotence, I recall the scripture before Noah’s Flood in which it says that God regretted he had ever made a man. For God to have regrets, to me, implies that He really didn’t know what was going to happen, else he wouldn’t have done it in the first place.
Thank’s Lissa I am making my way through an annotated Bible and came oppon the same section, it was one of those things that lead me to start this OP. I see plenty of God is greater than anything else, but nothing that suggests God is infinitely powerful or even incapable of error. I am thinking these ideas are ‘spin’ put on God’s abbilities by believers and not something directly claimed in the Bible itself.
Another non-perfect God thing from the Bible is that it took several plagues from God through Moses (well from reading it seems Aaron actually did the plague summoning actions) befor he did anything that the Pharoes wizards could not do. So the first few plagues were pointless as they did not show that Moses’s God was greater than the Pharoes wizard’s black magic.
Actually, although the OT is weird, it’s my understanding that the “building” effect of the plagues was designed as a deliberate statement by God, culminating in the deaths of the first born of Egypt. Each time God ‘hardens Pharoah’s heart’ He is ensuring that the Pharoah will not capitulate before the message is finished.
Shock and Awe, God Style.