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The Incoherence of the Omni-Properties

Classical theism describes God as omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good). These are presented as God's most impressive features. They are also, on close inspection, internally contradictory — both individually and in combination. A "maximally great being" defined by these attributes turns out to be not great but logically impossible.

Omnipotence Eats Itself

The classic puzzle: can God create a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it?

  • If He can create such a stone, there is something He cannot do (lift it). Not omnipotent.
  • If He cannot create such a stone, there is something He cannot do (create it). Not omnipotent.

Theologians escape by redefining omnipotence as "able to do anything logically possible." Fine — but then "omnipotence" no longer means what it sounds like. It means "very powerful, but bounded by logic." Which raises the question: what grounds logic? If logic constrains God, then logic is more fundamental than God. If God is the source of logic, He could in principle violate it — and we are back to the stone.

There are deeper problems. Can God:

  • Create a being with genuine free will whose actions God cannot predict? (Conflicts with omniscience.)
  • Sin? (If yes, He is not perfectly good. If no, He is not omnipotent.)
  • Cease to exist? (If yes, He depends on His own will. If no, He is bound.)
  • Make 2 + 2 = 5? (If yes, mathematics is arbitrary. If no, He is bounded.)

Each escape narrows what omnipotence means until the word does almost no work.

Omniscience Has Its Own Problems

Can an omniscient being know what it is like to be uncertain? To learn? To be surprised? These are all knowledge-states that essentially require not knowing. A being who has never been ignorant cannot know what ignorance feels like from the inside. So either omniscience is incomplete (there are knowledge-states it lacks) or omniscience is consistent only by excluding such states from "knowledge" — another quiet redefinition.

Worse, omniscience plus a changing world is incoherent. If God knew yesterday that I would type this sentence today, then today, when He knows I am typing it, His knowledge has changed (from "will type" to "is typing"). A being whose knowledge changes is not timelessly omniscient. A being whose knowledge does not change cannot track a changing reality.

Omnibenevolence in a World Like This

The third attribute is the one most thoroughly demolished by simple observation. A perfectly good being who is also all-powerful and all-knowing would not produce the world we live in — full of childhood cancers, parasitic worms that blind children, tsunamis, genetic diseases, and the slow agony of dementia. This is the classical Problem of Evil, and it has never been answered. It has only been deflected with appeals to mystery, free will (which doesn't explain natural evil), or the "greater good" (which makes God into a utilitarian who tortures the innocent for distant benefits).

The Combination Is Worse Than the Parts

Even if each property could be individually defended, their combination is unstable:

  • Omnipotent + omniscient: undermines free will (covered in another post).
  • Omniscient + omnibenevolent: God knew, before creating any soul, exactly who would be damned — and created them anyway.
  • Omnipotent + omnibenevolent: God could prevent any specific evil and chooses not to, every time.

Each pair generates contradictions. All three together generate a being who is impossible.

The Theologian's Retreat

Faced with these problems, sophisticated theology retreats into "apophatic" language — God is beyond our concepts, our categories don't apply, the omni-properties are analogies, etc. This is fine, but notice what has happened: the impressive God of the pulpit has been replaced by a being so abstract that nothing definite can be said about Him. The God who is "beyond all categories" is also beyond being argued for. You cannot have it both ways: a God concrete enough to demand worship and abstract enough to escape contradiction.

Conclusion

The omni-properties are not careful descriptions of a real being. They are superlatives — verbal expressions of "as great as possible" — that, when examined, dissolve into contradictions. The God of classical theism is not merely undetected; He is, on his own definitional terms, incoherent. You cannot have a square circle, and you cannot have a maximally great being either.