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    No agent, not even an omnipotent one, can bring it about ... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    No agent, not even an omnipotent one, can bring it about that (a) obtains.

    Divine Attributes
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.(a) is a past state of affairs.
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    • 2.It is impossible for any agent to have power over what is past.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.An omnipotent God exists outside of time and thus does not stand in a 'before' or 'after' relation to past states of affairs.
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    • 2.If God is atemporal, God's creative act sustains all moments of time simultaneously, making 'the past' accessible to divine action.
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    • 3.Therefore, the fixity of the past is a constraint on temporal agents, not on an atemporal omnipotent being.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Peter Damian argued that God can restore virginity retroactively, suggesting omnipotence may include power over logical and historical necessity.
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    • 2.If omnipotence means God is bound by no external constraints whatsoever, then the 'impossibility' of changing the past merely reflects our modal intuitions, not a genuine limit on divine power.
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    • 3.Dismissing retroactive divine power requires a prior commitment to a specific, contestable definition of omnipotence that excludes it by stipulation.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    (a) is a past state of affairs.An omnipotent God exists outside of time and thus does not stand in a 'before' o...Dismissing retroactive divine power requires a prior commitment to a specific, c...If God is atemporal, God's creative act sustains all moments of time simultaneou...
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    If omnipotence means God is bound by no external constraints whatsoever, then th...It is impossible for any agent to have power over what is past.Peter Damian argued that God can restore virginity retroactively, suggesting omn...Therefore, the fixity of the past is a constraint on temporal agents, not on an ...

    Similar

    Plato, as a non-omnipotent agent, can freely bring it about that (f) o...91%Once Parmenides has lectured, even an omnipotent agent cannot bring it...86%An omnipotent agent is not required to be able to bring about impossib...85%An omnipotent agent ought not to be required to have the power to brin...84%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: omnipotence
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    Note that (a) is a past state of affairs. Presumably, it is not possible for an efficient cause to occur later than its effect. However, an agent’s bringing about a state of affairs is a kind of efficient causation. Therefore, it is not possible for an agent to bring about anything that is in the past. In other words, it is impossible for any agent to have power over what is past. Hence, no agent, not even an omnipotent one, can bring it about that (a) obtains. Likewise, despite the fact that (b) can be brought about prior to \(t\), the impossibility of an agent’s having power over what is pas...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit