Notes · PhilosophyUK · A-Levels

The concept and nature of God

Before asking whether God exists, philosophy of religion analyses the concept of God — the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and supreme goodness, and God's relationship to time. This topic examines each attribute, the puzzles about their internal coherence (the paradox of the stone, foreknowledge and freedom, the Euthyphro dilemma) and whether they can be jointly held, so that the very idea of God is coherent.

5 sections~25 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 1 · Advanced 3

T·0888 / 17

Exam profile

AO1 · Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the divine attributes and the puzzles about their coherence and compatibilityAO2 · Analyse and evaluate whether the concept of God is internally coherent and whether the attributes can be jointly held, reaching a justified conclusion

Operators:explainoutlineanalyseassess'...' Discussto what extent

basic level

At AS-Level, define each attribute and explain one coherence problem (e.g. the paradox of the stone) with a response.

higher level

At full A-Level, analyse each attribute, reconstruct the coherence puzzles as arguments, and evaluate whether the concept of God is internally consistent and the attributes jointly compatible.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

The concept and nature of God

The divine attributes#

FoundationAQA 7172 3.3 Metaphysics of God — The concept and nature of GodDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The divine attributes and their puzzles

Fig. 1Each attribute generates a coherence puzzle: omnipotence the stone, omniscience free will, goodness the Euthyphro dilemma.

In classical (Judaeo-Christian-Islamic) theism, God is conceived as the greatest possible being, possessing a cluster of 'omni' attributes to the maximal degree. The three the specification foregrounds are omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful) and supreme goodness or omnibenevolence (all-good, perfectly morally good). To these classical theology usually adds that God is eternal (either timeless or everlasting), immutable (unchanging), and the necessary, self-existent creator and sustainer of all else. The philosophical task is not to assume this concept is coherent but to ANALYSE each attribute — to say precisely what it means — and then to test whether the attributes are individually coherent and jointly compatible.

Omniscience is standardly analysed as knowing all and only true propositions: for every proposition p, if p is true then God knows that p, and God believes no falsehood. This raises immediate questions — does omniscience include knowledge of the future (foreknowledge)? knowledge of what it is like to have experiences God does not have (fear, temptation)? knowledge of 'now', which seems to change? — each of which can be pressed into an argument for incoherence or for incompatibility with another attribute (notably human free will). Omnipotence is standardly analysed as the power to do anything — but 'anything' must be qualified, since the power to do the logically impossible (make a round square) seems not to be a genuine power at all, generating the paradox of the stone.

Supreme goodness admits of two readings that the topic must distinguish. On the first, God is morally perfect — always acts rightly, wills the good, is perfectly just and loving; this raises the Euthyphro dilemma (is the good good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?) and the problem of evil (how can a perfectly good God permit suffering?). On the second, older reading, God is metaphysically perfect or 'good' in the sense of complete, lacking no perfection — the summit of being. The two senses interact, and a candidate should be clear which is in play. The attribute of supreme goodness is what makes God worthy of worship and is central to the problem of evil in the later topic.

God's relationship to time frames several of the puzzles and is itself contested. The classical view (Boethius, Aquinas) holds God is ETERNAL in the sense of timeless — outside time altogether, with no past or future, apprehending all times in a single 'eternal present'. A rival view holds God is EVERLASTING (sempiternal) — in time, but without beginning or end, experiencing succession as we do but endlessly. Which view one takes shapes how one handles foreknowledge, immutability and God's action in the world, so it is a hinge issue. The overarching question of the topic is whether this whole package — an omniscient, omnipotent, supremely good, eternal being — is COHERENT: whether the attributes can be consistently defined and jointly instantiated by one being, or whether, as critics argue, they generate contradictions that show the concept of God to be incoherent, independently of whether any such being exists.

Worked example

Internal coherence vs compatibility

Distinguish two ways of arguing that the concept of God is incoherent, with an example of each.

Internal incoherence
An attribute is self-undermining: e.g. the paradox of the stone claims omnipotence is internally contradictory (God can and cannot make an unliftable stone).
Incompatibility
Two attributes cannot be jointly held: e.g. omniscient foreknowledge seems incompatible with genuine human free will.
A third form
An attribute conflicts with a fact about the world: e.g. supreme goodness and omnipotence seem incompatible with the existence of evil (the problem of evil).
The upshot
A coherent concept of God must survive all three; failing any one would show the concept flawed, independently of God's existence.

Result: The concept of God can be attacked as internally incoherent (the stone), as containing incompatible attributes (foreknowledge and freedom), or as incompatible with the world (evil); the topic tests all three.

Typical mistakes

Treating 'supreme goodness' as unambiguous; distinguish moral perfection (relevant to Euthyphro and evil) from metaphysical perfection (completeness of being).
Assuming omnipotence means the power to do the logically impossible; most theists restrict it to what is logically possible, which is the standard response to the paradox of the stone.

Active revision

Explain the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and supreme goodness. (5-mark AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Omnipotence and the paradox of the stone#

StandardAQA 7172 3.3 Metaphysics of God — The concept and nature of GodDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The paradox of the stone

Fig. 2Either horn seems to show something God cannot do; the response denies the task is genuinely possible.

The paradox of the stone is the classic argument that omnipotence is internally incoherent. It runs as a dilemma: can God create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it? If God CAN create such a stone, then there is something God cannot do (lift it), so God is not omnipotent. If God CANNOT create such a stone, then there is something God cannot do (create it), so God is not omnipotent. Either way, there is something God cannot do; so an omnipotent being is impossible, and the concept of God is incoherent. The paradox exploits the apparently unlimited scope of 'can do anything' by constructing a task whose very description involves a limit on God's power.

The standard and most powerful response restricts omnipotence to what is LOGICALLY POSSIBLE. Aquinas argued that omnipotence means the power to do anything that is logically possible — anything whose description does not involve a contradiction — and that 'a stone that an omnipotent being cannot lift' is a contradiction in terms, like 'a round square' or 'a married bachelor'. It is not that God's power fails to reach it; rather, there is no genuine task there to be done, no coherent thing to be created. So the inability to create a stone-too-heavy-for-an-omnipotent-being-to-lift is no limit on God's power, any more than the inability to draw a round square is; the phrase names nothing. On this view omnipotence is unlimited over the logically possible, and the paradox dissolves because it demands the logically impossible.

A bolder response, associated with Descartes, is universal possibilism: God's omnipotence extends even to the logically impossible, because God created the laws of logic themselves and is not bound by them; God could make a round square or make 2 + 2 = 5. This 'solves' the paradox by embracing that God can create the unliftable stone AND lift it, since contradictions do not constrain God. But most philosophers reject this as making omnipotence — and indeed all discourse about God — unintelligible: if God can violate logic, then 'God is omnipotent' and 'God is not omnipotent' could both be true, and we could infer nothing, so the position is self-defeating. The Thomist restriction to the logically possible is therefore the majority response.

Further refinements sharpen the concept. Even restricted to the logically possible, omnipotence needs qualification: an omnipotent being cannot do things that are logically possible but incompatible with its OTHER attributes — God, being essentially good, cannot sin or lie, and God, being immaterial, cannot (qua God) ride a bicycle or feel physical fatigue. This suggests omnipotence should be analysed not as 'the power to do any logically possible action' but as 'the power to bring about any logically possible state of affairs consistent with God's nature'. A remaining puzzle, the 'McEar' objection, notes that a being essentially able only to scratch its ear would then count as omnipotent (it can do everything consistent with its nature), which shows the definition needs further care. Evaluation weighs whether these refinements successfully rescue a robust notion of omnipotence, or whether each patch narrows the attribute until 'omnipotent' means little more than 'as powerful as its nature allows' — a live question, but one on which the majority verdict is that the logical-possibility restriction defeats the paradox of the stone without emptying omnipotence of content.

Worked example

Dissolving the paradox

Show how the logical-possibility restriction answers the paradox of the stone, and state one residual worry.

State the restriction
Omnipotence = the power to do anything logically possible; the logically impossible is not a task, so failing to do it is no lack of power.
Apply to the stone
'A stone too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift' is contradictory, like a round square; there is nothing there to create, so God's not creating it limits nothing.
The verdict
The dilemma's second horn is defused: God 'cannot' make the stone only in the harmless sense that the description is incoherent.
Residual worry
The definition needs further tuning (consistency with God's nature; the McEar objection) so that 'omnipotent' is not trivially satisfied — but this refines, rather than revives, the paradox.

Result: The paradox of the stone fails against a correctly restricted notion of omnipotence: it demands the logically impossible, which is no genuine power; the concept needs refinement but is not shown incoherent.

Typical mistakes

Saying the response 'limits' God's power; the point is that the logically impossible is not a genuine object of power at all, so no real limit is imposed.
Attributing the logical-possibility restriction to Descartes; Descartes held the opposite (God can do the logically impossible) — Aquinas gives the restriction.

Active revision

'The paradox of the stone shows that omnipotence is incoherent.' Assess this claim. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Omniscience and human freedom#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.3 Metaphysics of God — The concept and nature of GodDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Foreknowledge and freedom

Fig. 3God's infallible prior knowledge of my act seems to entail I could not do otherwise, threatening freedom.

The most discussed compatibility problem is between divine omniscience (specifically foreknowledge) and human free will. The argument for incompatibility runs: if God is omniscient, God knew, before I was born, everything I would ever do — including that I would (say) choose tea this morning. God's beliefs cannot be false (God knows, and knowledge entails truth). So it was true, before I was born, that I would choose tea; and since God already infallibly knew it, I could not have done otherwise — for if I had chosen coffee, God's prior belief would have been false, which is impossible. So my choice was not free: divine foreknowledge and human freedom cannot both obtain, and since God is essentially omniscient, the existence of an omniscient God is incompatible with genuine human freedom.

The problem is sometimes formalised as a 'transfer of necessity' argument: God's past belief that I would choose tea is now a fixed fact about the past (the 'necessity of the past' — we cannot change what has already happened); if that past fact necessitates my present choice, then my choice is not up to me. The threat is not that God's knowledge CAUSES my action (God's knowing does not make me act, any more than your watching me does), but that my action's being infallibly foreknown seems to entail that I could not do otherwise, which many take to be required for freedom (the libertarian conception).

There are four main responses. (1) The Boethian solution: God is TIMELESS, so God does not literally FOREknow anything — God does not know my choice 'in advance', but sees all times in a single eternal present, as an observer on a hill sees the whole road at once. God's knowledge of my choice is like our knowledge of a present event: seeing me choose tea now does not make my choosing unfree, so God's timeless 'seeing' of it does not either. (2) Ockham's solution: God's past beliefs about my future are 'soft facts' about the past — facts that depend on how the future turns out — not 'hard facts' that are now fixed independently of me; so the necessity-of-the-past principle does not apply, and I retain the power to act such that God would have believed otherwise. (3) Molinism (middle knowledge): God knows, via His knowledge of what every free creature WOULD freely do in any circumstance, without determining it — reconciling foreknowledge with libertarian freedom, though at the cost of the contested 'grounding' of these conditionals. (4) The compatibilist move: deny that freedom requires the ability to do otherwise; if free action is action from one's own desires and reasons (rather than external compulsion), it is compatible with being foreknown or even determined.

Evaluation weighs these against their costs. The Boethian solution is elegant but faces the objection (pressed by e.g. Anthony Kenny) that timelessness may not really solve the problem — if God's timeless knowledge is 'fixed' relative to my present, the same necessity threatens — and that a timeless God struggles to act in, and respond to, a temporal world (see the next section). Ockham's soft/hard-fact distinction is promising but hard to make precise (what makes a fact 'soft'?). Molinism reconciles the attributes but many doubt there are true 'counterfactuals of freedom' for God to know, and worries it makes God's providence depend on facts God does not control. Compatibilism dissolves the problem but only by adopting a conception of freedom that libertarians reject as insufficient for genuine responsibility. A balanced judgement is that the strongest theistic responses (Boethian timelessness plus Ockham, or Molinism) show the incompatibility argument is not decisive — foreknowledge does not obviously destroy freedom, since knowing is not causing — but that each response carries a cost, so the coherence of omniscient-foreknowledge-with-freedom is defensible rather than obvious, and turns partly on one's independent theory of free will and of God's relation to time.

Worked example

The Boethian response assessed

Explain the Boethian solution to the foreknowledge problem and one objection to it.

The move
God is timeless, so does not literally FOREknow; God sees all times in one eternal present, as we see a present event.
Why it helps
Seeing me choose tea now does not make the choice unfree; so God's timeless 'seeing' of it imposes no necessity 'in advance'.
The objection
God's timeless knowledge may still be fixed relative to my present, so the necessity threatens again; and a timeless God struggles to act in and respond to time.
A supplement
Boethians often add Ockham's soft-fact move to explain why God's knowledge does not count as a fixed 'hard' fact about my past.

Result: The Boethian solution reframes foreknowledge as timeless observation, blunting the necessity worry, but faces the charge that it merely relocates the fixity and complicates God's action in time — so it defends, without decisively securing, the compatibility.

Typical mistakes

Saying God's foreknowledge CAUSES the action; the argument turns on infallible foreknowledge ENTAILING that one cannot do otherwise, not on causation.
Presenting timelessness as an obvious fix; note the objection that timeless knowledge may still be 'fixed' relative to us, and that it strains God's action in time.

Active revision

'Divine omniscience is incompatible with human free will.' Is this claim true? Defend your answer. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

God and time: eternal or everlasting#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.3 Metaphysics of God — The concept and nature of GodDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Two views of God and time

Fig. 4Timeless eternity secures immutability but strains action; everlasting time secures responsiveness but revives foreknowledge.

How God relates to time is a hinge issue that shapes the other puzzles. The classical view, developed by Boethius and Aquinas, is that God is ETERNAL in the sense of TIMELESS: God exists wholly outside time, with no past, present or future, no before or after, no succession of states. Boethius' definition is that eternity is 'the complete possession all at once of illimitable life' — God possesses the whole of His life in a single, indivisible present, apprehending all of created time 'at once'. This view flows naturally from divine perfection and immutability: a perfect being cannot change (change implies gaining or losing something, hence imperfection), and to be in time is to be subject to succession and change, so a perfect being must be timeless.

Timelessness has powerful theological advantages. It helps with foreknowledge (God does not literally know the future in advance, but timelessly sees all times), with immutability (a timeless God cannot change), and with God's relation to a created order that includes time (God creates time itself, so cannot be within it). But it faces serious objections. First, a timeless God seems unable to ACT in time or RESPOND to temporal events — to answer a prayer offered on Tuesday, to become incarnate at a particular date, to react to human choices — since acting and responding seem to involve temporal sequence (first the prayer, then the response). Second, it is unclear a timeless being can be a PERSON or have a personal relationship with temporal creatures, since personhood seems to involve remembering, anticipating, deliberating and responding, all temporal. Third, it is unclear a timeless being can know what time it is NOW (indexical, tensed knowledge), which seems required for full omniscience.

The rival view holds God is EVERLASTING (sempiternal): God is IN time, but exists at every time, without beginning or end — He always has existed and always will. This is the view of much biblical language (God acts, responds, remembers, promises) and of philosophers such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Richard Swinburne, who argue that a genuinely personal, responsive God who acts in history must be temporal. Everlastingness makes God's action and responsiveness straightforward (God acts at times, in sequence, like a temporal agent), and secures tensed knowledge (God knows what is happening now). Its costs are the mirror image of timelessness's advantages: an everlasting God is subject to succession and (arguably) to change, complicating strict immutability; and, being in time, God literally FOREknows the future, reviving the foreknowledge-freedom problem in full force.

Evaluation is a matter of which cluster of costs is more acceptable, and it interacts with one's other commitments. If one prizes divine immutability, perfection and a clean solution to foreknowledge, timelessness is attractive — but one must then explain divine action, responsiveness and personhood in a temporal world, perhaps by saying God timelessly wills temporally-located effects. If one prizes a personal, responsive, biblically recognisable God who acts in history, everlastingness is attractive — but one must then handle immutability (perhaps by distinguishing God's unchanging character from His changing relations) and foreknowledge (by one of the earlier responses, or by 'open theism', which limits God's knowledge of future free actions). A defensible A-Level judgement notes that neither view is obviously incoherent, that each secures some intuitions about God at the cost of others, and that the choice tracks a deeper question about whether the God of classical metaphysics (timeless, immutable, simple) or the more personal, responsive God of religious practice is the more adequate concept — a question on which reasonable theists divide, which itself shows the concept of God is under-determined rather than plainly incoherent.

Worked example

The action objection to timelessness

Explain the objection that a timeless God cannot act in or respond to the world, and a theist's reply.

The objection
Acting and responding seem temporal — first a prayer is offered, then God responds; a timeless being, with no before/after, cannot enter such a sequence.
Sharpen it
Answering a specific prayer, becoming incarnate at a date, or reacting to a choice all appear to require God to be located in time relative to those events.
The reply
God timelessly WILLS effects that are temporally located: in one eternal act God wills that, at Tuesday, such-and-such occur — the effect is in time though the willing is not.
Assess
This preserves timelessness but strains 'response' (a timeless will cannot be a reaction TO a prayer it eternally already accommodates), so the tension is reduced, not removed.

Result: The action objection is a real cost of timelessness; the 'timeless willing of temporal effects' reply mitigates it but struggles with genuine responsiveness, which is why some theists prefer an everlasting God despite its own costs.

Typical mistakes

Treating 'eternal' as unambiguous; it must be disambiguated into timeless (atemporal) and everlasting (sempiternal), which have different consequences.
Assuming timelessness obviously fits religious practice; the difficulty of a timeless God acting in and responding to time is a serious objection to weigh.

Active revision

'God must be timeless.' Discuss. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Supreme goodness and the coherence of the concept#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.3 Metaphysics of God — The concept and nature of GodDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The Euthyphro dilemma

Fig. 5Divine command makes goodness arbitrary; an independent standard limits God; the divine-nature theory rejects both.

Supreme goodness (in its moral sense) generates the Euthyphro dilemma, first raised in Plato's Euthyphro and transposed to monotheism: is an action good (or commanded) BECAUSE God wills it, or does God will it BECAUSE it is good? Each horn is uncomfortable for the theist. If things are good because God wills them (divine command theory / theological voluntarism), then morality is arbitrary: had God commanded cruelty, cruelty would be good, and 'God is good' reduces to the empty 'God does what God wills'. If God wills things because they are good, then goodness is independent of God — there is a standard of goodness God consults and conforms to — which seems to compromise God's sovereignty and aseity (self-sufficiency), making God subject to something outside Himself.

The most influential response is to reject the dilemma as a false one by locating goodness in God's NATURE rather than in His will or in an external standard. On this view (Aquinas, and modern 'divine nature' theories), God IS goodness itself — the supreme good, the standard of goodness — so goodness is neither arbitrary (it is not a matter of God's arbitrary will, but of God's unchanging perfect nature) nor external (it is not a standard above God, but is God's own essence). God commands what is good because God is good, and what is good is what accords with God's nature; the dilemma's two horns both presuppose that goodness and God are separable, which classical theism denies. This is powerful but faces the rejoinder that it may relocate rather than solve the problem: is God's nature good because it is God's, or by an independent standard? (The 'emptiness' worry returns — calling God's nature 'good' seems to need an independent criterion of goodness, or else 'good' just means 'God-like'.)

Beyond Euthyphro, supreme goodness must be shown COMPATIBLE with the other attributes and with the world. The problem of evil (the next major topic) is precisely the argument that supreme goodness and omnipotence are incompatible with the suffering we observe. There are also internal puzzles: can a supremely good being do evil? If not, is God's inability to sin a limit on omnipotence (answered by restricting omnipotence to what accords with God's nature)? Can God, being perfectly good, fail to create the best possible world, or is God constrained to create it (Leibniz), which seems to limit freedom? Each puzzle tests whether the 'omni' attributes can be jointly and consistently instantiated.

The overall question is whether the concept of God — omniscient, omnipotent, supremely good, eternal — is coherent. Critics (Kenny, Everitt) argue that the attributes, individually plausible, generate contradictions when combined (omniscience vs freedom; timelessness vs personal action; omnipotence vs goodness in the face of evil), so the concept is incoherent and no such being could exist, quite apart from the arguments for and against God's existence. Defenders reply that each alleged incoherence dissolves under careful analysis (omnipotence restricted to the logically possible and to God's nature; foreknowledge reconciled by timelessness or middle knowledge; Euthyphro answered by the divine-nature theory), so the concept, though demanding, is consistent. A balanced A-Level judgement is that no single incoherence argument is clearly decisive — each has a serious theistic reply — but that the concept is under considerable strain, requiring a package of contested moves (timelessness or Molinism, the logical-possibility restriction, the divine-nature theory) that must all hold together; whether the resulting concept is coherent is therefore reasonably contested, and connects directly to the arguments for God's existence (which presuppose a coherent concept to argue about) and to the problem of evil (the sharpest compatibility challenge to supreme goodness).

Worked example

The divine-nature response to Euthyphro

Explain how the divine-nature theory rejects the Euthyphro dilemma, and state the objection it faces.

The dilemma
Either good = whatever God wills (arbitrary) or God wills the good because it is good (a standard above God).
The response
Reject both horns: God is goodness itself; goodness is God's unchanging nature, so it is neither arbitrary willing nor an external standard.
Why it helps
God could not command cruelty (it is contrary to His nature), so morality is not arbitrary; and goodness is not above God, but is God's essence, so sovereignty is preserved.
The objection
Is God's nature good because it is God's, or by an independent criterion? If the former, 'good' seems to mean merely 'God-like' (emptiness); if the latter, the external standard returns.

Result: The divine-nature theory dissolves the original dilemma by identifying God with goodness, but faces a relocated version of the emptiness worry — so it is a strong, though not uncontested, defence of the coherence of supreme goodness.

Typical mistakes

Presenting the Euthyphro dilemma as unanswerable; the divine-nature theory rejects both horns, and must be engaged before judging.
Treating 'incoherent' and 'non-existent' as the same; an incoherence argument aims to show no such being COULD exist (a conceptual claim), independently of the existence debate.

Active revision

'The concept of God is incoherent.' Is this claim true? Defend your answer. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy

The concept and nature of God

5 sections~25 min reading time2 competenciesLevel Foundation 1 · Standard 1 · Advanced 3

The concept and nature of God

Key points

Internal coherence vs compatibility

Key points

Dissolving the paradox

Key points

The Boethian response assessed

Key points

The action objection to timelessness

Key points

The divine-nature response to Euthyphro

Sources

The concept and nature of God

Key points

Internal coherence vs compatibility

Key points

Dissolving the paradox

Key points

The Boethian response assessed

Key points

The action objection to timelessness

Key points

The divine-nature response to Euthyphro

Sources