How does omnipotence conflict with omniscience?

Question

God can't change what he already knew was going to happen? Isn't this the same flaw as "Can God make a rock so heavy..."?

Answer 1

I don't see that omnipotence and omniscience conflict at all. Just because god knows everything... why would that stop him from being all-powerful?

As for the Holocaust example, yes... some people have difficulty with that concept, that this god they've created allowed that to happen.

But omnipotence and omniscience don't conflict at all if you accept that god is an uncaring bastard. He knows, he ~could~ stop it if he wanted to, but he just doesn't want to, or doesn't care enough to do anything about it.

Or... maybe he cares so much that he's willing to let us make our own mistakes.

Go watch Bruce Almighty. That might help you with this little problem.

Answer 2

Because He is omniscient, he powerfully acts according to knowledge. Because He is omnipotent, He knowingly acts according to His power. He is eternal, therefore outside time. His knowledge and power behave at once forever.

And no, this is nothing like the big rock thing. God cannot do what is impossible. He can't do something He can't do. It is a nonesense question. It's like asking, if God can do anything, can he make square circles? Of course not. God is all powerful, but that doesn't mean he can do illogical things. Omnipotent is not the same as "can do anything." Clearly, He can do all that can be done.

Answer 3

For some people it doesn't. Theologians especially began to question the idea that God could be both all-knowing and all present after the Holocaust. The question that arises with wanting to assert that God is both relates mainly to suffering. How can an all knowing and all loving allow such horrendous suffering. How can an all knowing God not intervene to prevent tragedy? Many theologians would rather assert the concept of a loving, all present God over the belief in an all-knowing God.

Answer 4

Omnipotence (literally, "all power") is power with no limits or inexhaustible, in other words, unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to God.


Omniscience is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In monotheism, this ability is typically attributed to God.

Answer 5

God doesn't know what "is going to happen". This phrase indicates future tense. For God there is no future or past, for God exists outside of time. From His viewpoint outside of time, God perpetually views the fullness of time and everything that happens in within time. At this very "moment" (the term "moment" doesn't actually apply to God since it a measure of time) God is seeing the creation of the universe, the death of Jesus on the cross, my own birth and death, and the births and deaths of my descendents in the 40th Century. So, God has already seen and is seeing every event that occurs in time. He cannot change or prevent such events because from his perspective they have already occurred. He only knows about them because He has seen them, even though they have not yet taken place, from the perspective of our limited linear existence within time.

Answer 6

Can omniscient God, who
Knows the future, find
The omnipotence to
Change his future mind?

--Karen Owens

Answer 7

Omnipotence means all poweful.
Omniscience means all knowing.

If knowledge is power, where's the flaw?

Answer 8

He(omnipotent) can't avoid the unavoidable(what the omniscient foresaw)

Answer 9

Quick example, coming right up:

Can God be wrong?

If so, then he's not omniscient. (being all-knowing means he'd never be wrong)
If not, then he's not omnipotent. (being all-powerful means there is nothing he can't do)

Therefore, no entity can be both all-powerful (omnipotent) and all-knowing (omniscient). It's a self-contradiction and therefore impossible.

Answer 10

God is both and thats that..................