First, full disclaimer: I am not a Christian. I am, however, starting to read the Bible.
Can someone direct me to the passages in the Bible that state or indicate that God is omnipotent and omniscient? Or (please forgive me if this is out of my ignorance) if the current belief that God has those qualities does not come directly from the Bible, then can someone direct me to the where/when/who/how it was established that He does?
Please note that this is GQ and I am not looking to start a debate about anything (God’s existence, any logical [in]consistencies, whether God could make a boulder so big he couldn’t move it, etc.) I"m just looking for the factual answer to where the idea that God is omnipotent and omniscient originates from.
What if it takes me six days to finish the whole project, at which point I then have to rest? Is that less powerful than someone who could hypothetically swing it in six hours, or six minutes?
Not really. Bulding a single world is fairly impressive, but it is nowhere near omnipotent. And as The Other Waldo Pepper brings up there’s the timescale to consider; an omnipotent could have done everything instantly.
I don’t see why; nothing is mentioned about sensory abilities in that passage except that God can see.
What I was taught, in a history of religion class, was that it developed over time, mostly in the Roman Empire, but inspired by Greek philosophy. The Romans took up the Greek notions of “the infinite,” such as Zeno’s paradox, etc., and applied these ideas to the Jewish/Christian God.
The Bible doesn’t actually declare God “omnipotent.” The early books, esecially, suggest that he is not “omniscient.” He asks where Adam and Eve are, for instance. Modern conventional Christian theology explains that away, of course, but, at least according to my old teachers, Yahweh was not originally understood to be “cosmic” in power, merely “very powerful.”
Perhaps God was establishing an important precedent for the “break time” that has become a staple of human employment?
Also, I find the idea that God might have been a subcontractor for perhaps just our solar system and whatever could be seen from it with the naked eye quite interesting. I wasn’t raised to think of it that way, but it is possible.
There are a number of references in the Bible to the Almighty, which can be searched for.
Wikipedia lists these references:
Psalms 33:8-9: Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.
Genesis 17:1: And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. (The Hebrew word used here is “shadday” [13])
Jeremiah 32:27: Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
Those don’t seem to me to be claims of pure omnipotence, but opinions differ. For more discussion see Wikipedia: Omnipotence - Wikipedia I liked their reference to Thomas Aquinas: while “all confess that God is omnipotent…it seems difficult to explain in what God’s omnipotence precisely consists… Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.”
Omnipotence implies omniscience, provided the Deity is sufficiently motivated.
But “by definition” isn’t what I was asking for (and neither was “If you can do that you are omnipotent”, which is a conclusion drawn from the Bible, rather than a definitive statement in the Bible).
On the other hand, that page you cite has exactly what I was looking for; pretty definitive statements in the Bible, such as:
Emphasis added. That’s an unmistakable statement of omniscience.
This might be a bit of a nitpick, given that this is a translation, but is it? Being able to understand everything is not the same as being able to know everything.
Right but being able to understand everything is also not the same as having an understanding of everything and, this translation at least, seems to be implying the latter.
Here is the best quote I could find:
Revelation 19:6
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
Although I understand a literal translation from the Greek would be “almighty.”
I recall reading somewhere, a few years back, that there is a school of thought in Judaism that says that the God of the Bible is in fact a creation or emanation of the “true God”, who is unknowable (or something like that). I presume this is not mainstream Judaism, but probably Kabbalism.
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.