Here it is folks! I have the answer to the age old question “can God make a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” I’m pretty sure everyone reading this has heard this particular paradox that attempts to limit God’s omnipotence by saying if He can’t make a rock that big, He’s not omnipotent, and if He can make it, then He’s not omnipotent because He can’t lift the rock.
Typical apologists tie themselves in knots saying things like it would be against His nature to create something that would limit His omnipotence. My favorite is that creating a rock of this size would inevitably make it cease to be a rock because at some point a rock becomes a cliff, a mountain, a continent, an asteroid, an orbiter, or a planet.
But these apologists just play into the hands of the atheists with their rhetorical counters. Before I became a Christian, I used to get no end of amusement from the foolishness of these replies. Didn’t they realize they were admitting to their God’s impotence with these non-answers? Then God audibly spoke to me and turned my life upside down. He was real?
Suddenly I didn’t find the paradox quite so humorous. Is this God who revealed Himself to me omnipotent or what?
So, I started to search the scriptures to find out if there was anything in there about God’s omnipotence. And it wasn’t hard to find affirmatives to my query:
Jeremiah 32:17 “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”Luke 1:37 “Nothing is impossible with God”
Matthew 19:26 “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Mark 14:36 "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
Psalm 115:3 “But our God [is] in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.”
The answer seemed to be “yes” God is omnipotent. So, what to do with the paradox?
Can God create a rock so big that He couldn’t lift it? Well, the answer must also be a “yes” lest we try and limit His omnipotence just like the atheists attempt to. It would be one honking big rock too: infinite in size, way beyond the comprehension of any created being like ourselves, even the angels would ponder the thing in its all-consuming bulk. And it would in effect limit His omnipotence. He would cease to be all-powerful because He couldn’t lift it. But this is all hypothetical because God has not created such a rock (I think we’d notice), and until He did, His omnipotence remains.
Now the question becomes would God ever create such a rock? The verses listed suggest that God does whatever pleases Him. Would He be pleased to cease to be the most powerful being in existence just to make a few tiny people He created, who don’t even believe He exists, feel better about themselves and their sins and iniquities?
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the infinite rock to appear any time soon. God doesn’t disappear in a puff of logic, and He remains omnipotent. All praise and glory to the One who is, who was, and is to come.
