God’s Omnipotence and the Problem of Evil II (updated from 2005)
It is often taken as obvious that God is omnipotent, but what evidence do we have for that? It seems to me something that cannot be determined. God is clearly much more powerful than we are, is able to perform miracles, create something from nothing, and so forth, but that is not the same as omnipotence. It seems likely that if God created the earth, He could destroy it too, but we don’t have a lot of information on the subject (ending it at Judgement Day is different from being able to end it at any time).
Similarly, how could we decide whether God foresees all things? I do not view that as intrinsically unlikely, but I don’t know the evidence for it. That God can foresee *many* things is not the same.
The only place to find evidence would be in the Bible, and I wonder whether there are any passages sufficiently broad in context. God is mighty and can do miracles– agreed. God can predict the future– agreed. And those are the most important points. But to make as precise statements that God can do anything and knows everything requires more detail— useless detail, perhaps–0 than the Bible usually provides. I say “useless” because if it turned out that God could do anything except destroy the planet Jupiter, that would mean he was not omnipotent but was for all practical purposes omnipotent.
Maybe this points to a solution to the Problem of Evil: God cannot prevent all evil. This need not be full-fledged dualism, just acknowledgement of lack of omnipotence and constraint by someone or something. In fact, even if God is omnipotent, evil is evil, and while it may be required for some greater good, an even better thing would be to have the greater good without the necessary evil. Some kind of facts constraint even the omnipotent God. But we must still grant that God, being powerful, could prevent much evil, if not all of it. So this is not a true solution to the Problem.