God Almighty (as far as it goes)

"If God is God He is not good, If God is good He is not God"

—Archibald MacLeish, JB: A Play in Verse

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One of the biggest influences on my beliefs about God came in the form of a very old webcomic featuring God playing Yahtzee with Einstein. In the midst of failing to roll any sixes, God laments, "Omnipotence only goes so far!"

The author is riffing on principles in modern math and science that not only express uncertainty about the world, they assert uncertainty as an unavoidable quality of the world. According to many of the smartest people out there, sometimes you not only don't know, sometimes it's impossible to know. There's Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which says you can't measure both the position and the speed of an electron. Then there are Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, which say no mathematical system can prove all true statements, nor can math prove its own consistency. Einstein's Theory of Relativity says it all depends on where you stand. Schrödinger's Cat may and may not be an example of this as well.

I'm far from an expert on any of this, I'm just observing how comfortable modern intellectuals are with the notion that the universe inherently limits knowledge and power. This isn't for lack of trying; the scientific dream of a mathematically comprehensible deterministic universe died hard. But it turns out that our inability to know everything and do anything isn't merely a reflection of our own mortal capacities. The problem seems to be that omniscience and omnipotence prove to be incoherent ideas when taken to their natural conclusions. Once you start to ask what is meant by "everything and anything," if you really get into it, your thoughts will collapse into paradox and contradiction. This sentence is false. That sort of thing.

So imagine my surprise when these same intellectuals dip their toes into theology and say something along these lines...

"Let me get this straight. God is the all-knowing all-powerful creator of the universe. He created the world with certain rules, and if we break them he'll send us to hell. But then he also made a rule where if he came to earth, suffered and died, and we believe he did that, we'll go to heaven. Oh and also, he created us already knowing who would break the rules and who wouldn't believe, and he knew he’d come back after he died, but we have to take it on faith. We're supposed to be grateful for this? Why didn't he create us to follow the rules and believe? Why didn't he just send us to heaven in the first place? This sounds like a rigged game, and God sounds like an asshole."

Sadly, they aren't getting these ideas from nowhere. There are Christians who would mostly agree with this assessment, who believe in the rigged game and choose to play it, because regardless of what we think of it, these are God Almighty's rules.

This is one of those awkward conflicts where the extremists on either side will fight tooth and nail while sharing the same incorrect premise. God is the most powerful, but God isn't that powerful. The meaning of the story changes completely once you understand that omnipotence only goes so far.

God's power is limited in part by those weird truths about the world that the intellectuals are otherwise comfortable with. God can't create a mathematical system that proves its own consistency, either. This isn't even a new concept; theologians and philosophers have been proposing some variation of "God can't paradox" for millennia. The only time smart people seem to forget this is when arguing with Christians.

But if you ask me, it's those Christians who should really know better, because the Bible is filled with stories portraying God as limited by much more than just paradox. Jesus isn't out there just effortlessly willing his miracles. He needs to spit in some mud and rub it into a blind man's eyes to cure him. Healing a deaf and mute man apparently involves sticking his fingers in the guy's mouth and ears. He can't just poof demons out of existence, he needs to stash them in a herd of swine. He needs water to make wine, and some starter loaves and fishes to feed a crowd. He gets tired and needs to rest—a lot!

But ok, maybe some of this is just because Christ was squeezing into a human suit, so let's take a look at the story of Creation. God didn't create everything from nothing. Chaos was there before God swept in. God separated waters that were already there to make the sky and sea, and then gathered them together to uncover land. Yes, sometimes God can create just by saying what should be (or at least we don't get any additional details regarding the steps involved.) But other times God needs to gather up dust and breathe into it, or swipe a rib from the last person God made. God is molding a substance as much as God is willing anything into existence, and that medium guides and limits what God can create. Creation is work, it all takes time and effort, and even God needs a day of rest afterwards.

Folks often contrast the imperfection and human-like qualities of the gods of polytheism with the monotheistic idea of a perfect God, but that transition was still in process when the Bible was being written. It would be a few centuries before Greek philosophy got fused into Christian theology and all this omni-whatever became a real issue. Crack open to any page of scripture, even the New Testament, and you'll be reading a story in which God has feelings, desires and limitations, where God can be angry, exhausted and even surprised.

I suppose you could dismiss all this as theatrics for the benefit of the audience, like the way God put dinosaur bones in the ground just to mess with us. Or you can accept that Almighty just means all the might there actually is, not all the might you can imagine.

And no, Mr. MacLeish, this does not mean "He is not God."¹ Is it not enough that God could fill every valley, level every mountain and bring the rulers of earth down to nothing? That God could beat the Hulk and Superman in a fight? I know it's not quite as edgy to say, "With God, all things (that are possible) are possible," but that's still a pretty big deal, leaving plenty in God's hands that would be impossible for mere mortals. The greatest is God; there's no need for God to be any greater than that.

And so we turn back to the hardest thing for God to do. No, I do not believe Christ was playing a rigged game. God certainly caused a fair amount of suffering and death, especially in the earlier episodes, but there's no mention of God creating Suffering and Death, and we're told Jesus had to go through quite a bit of both to overcome them. God may be the root cause of all effects, but that doesn't mean God invented cause and effect. Recognizing this doesn't merely avoid the paradoxes of omnipotence or the need for theodicy. It's what makes the whole story make sense. Sacrifice isn't required because God wills it. Sacrifice is required, so God wills it.

The strongest argument for accepting the idea of limited omnipotence in a Christian context is that it causes the story of Jesus to cohere into something that at least somewhat resonates with our moral intuitions. Even if you don't believe or agree with the moral of the story, if you want to at least understand what the authors intended in the first place, you shouldn't be projecting philosophical conjecture about omnipotence onto it. You don't need to pin down the exact boundaries of God's power, you just need to know there are boundaries.

I happen to believe the moral of the story. I believe it regardless of what the Bible says, but I think the story of Jesus demonstrates the lesson in a way that no other religion or philosophy achieves. Sacrificing for those you love despite their faults is at the heart of what it means to be a good person and to live a meaningful life. That the most powerful being in the universe would lay down his life out of love for the least worthy sinners captures this moral truth like nothing else, regardless of whether or not it's literally true.

So I'm unimpressed by arguments for or against Christianity that hinge on taking "almighty" to absurd extremes. They're missing the point entirely. Instead, I'd like you to imagine Christ, as powerful and knowledgeable as they come, hanging there on his cross with his bloody crown of thorns and his arms forcibly outstretched, looking up at you in desperation and pleading, "Got any better ideas?"

Because God may love us all, but omnipotence only goes so far.

1. To be fair, this quote comes from a play about the book of Job, arguably God at His most dickish. It's a really good play! You should read it!