This question, or one of its many permutations, is one that on the surface may seem to be a stumper for the Christian. The premise is that if God can make a [fill in object] so incredibly huge that God no longer has full dominion over it then He is, obviously, a finite God no more worthy of our worship than Bicycle Repair Man.
There is a simple answer to this question. It goes along the lines of, “that’s just a dumb question.” C.S Lewis puts it a little kinder by saying that it’s “nonsense.” Though it is very popular to say that there is no such thing as a dumb question, only dumb answers, it is rubbish to say so. There are dumb questions. For instance, “why do I have to get up in the morning to go to work to get paid? Can’t I just lie at home and receive a paycheck?” Ask your boss that question and you will quickly see how dumb that question is. Mileage may vary if you work for a government entity.
But the simple answer really doesn’t help much except to make the person asking it think you are a complete, intractable, obtuse, dunder head. Let’s avoid that and go for the long answer. First, as with any question, it is important to remember that the person asking the question is a real person and that they may have real, deeper, questions at the heart of this one. That is why the short answer should be jettisoned. In rare instances it may actually be that this question is one that the individual has been agonizing over. Much like the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog. Often in answering “trap” questions such as this genuinely, you are able to question the questioner and strip away presuppositions, expose errors in logic, and get at the heart felt reasons for why the individual has been rejecting God.
It is important not to build our house from the roof down so we should lay our foundation first before tackling the answer. The two main foundational points to address and define prior to answering this question are:
- Who is God and what are his attributes?
- What are some logical errors or incorrect presuppositions encapsulated in the question?
Define God and Give Three Examples
Go ahead, you have 5 minutes.
Were we to attempt a full definition of God here, we would fail miserably at fully exploring the depth and breadth of all His attributes. Even the fullest description and definition would only succeed at giving but a faint glimmer to His majesty. So, having failed in that endeavor before even beginning, we will stick to those attributes of God that relate directly to the answer of this question. Here are the unique God attributes we are concerned with:
- God is unchanging – same yesterday, today, and forever (Num 23:19, Mal 3:6, Heb 13:8)
- God is infinite in all his attributes (1 Kings 8:27):
- Omnipotent (all powerful) – Job 42:2, Ps 33:6-7, Ps 115:3
- Omniscient (all knowing) - Ps 139:1-6, 13-16, Is: 40-13-14, 48:3-5, 1 Jn 3:20
- Omnipresent (all present – everywhere) – Ps 139:7-12, Is 48:5, Mt 6:6,
- God is eternally existent (no beginning, no end) – Gen 22:33, Dt 33:27, Hab 3:6, 1Tim 1:17
- God is unique – there is no other like Him – 2 Sam 7:22, Ps 86:8, Is 40:25, 1 Tim 6:15-16
- God is logical and does not violate the laws of logic
When we look at these attributes we see that God cannot change. He cannot diminish nor can He increase. He is fully manifest in His infinite capacity as God. By extension, nothing can be more than God in any of its attributes. For that to be true, God would cease to be God – which He cannot. He is infinite and unchanging, after all. If He were less than perfect or infinite in any of His attributes there would be room for something to be greater than He. In which case, God would no longer be unique or infinite in his attributes. Also, God operates within the laws of logic which are an eternal, infinite aspect of His being.
If there were something or someone that were more powerful than God then His infinite, unique characteristic of omnipotence would no longer be His because he is no longer all powerful. There is someone or something more powerful than He. As to the logical nature of God, he would never make the square root of 4 = 10 even though He is omnipotent. That would be nonsensical.
Elementary, my dear Watson
There is a bit of logic that we need to interject into this discussion. God, being a logical being, operates within the realm of logic. It is not that logic is a higher law that He must submit to but that logic is part of the warp and woof of His being. With that in mind we should note that within a category you cannot have two or more mutually exclusive statements or truths. For instance: in the realm of shapes a square cannot be round, in colors green cannot be orange, and the number 8 cannot be the number 5. This should be completely logical unless you are attending a school that uses the Common Core curriculum or perhaps that you have taken a philosophy or logic class too many in college. Another way of stating this is that statements concerning an object, concept, etc must be logically consistent with the nature of that object.
The second bit of logic to bring to the table is the Law of non-contradiction which states that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. For example: you could not say, “At 8:00am Sally was pregnant and not pregnant.” She either is or she isn’t.
That is Most Illogical, Captain
Let’s put all this stuff together now that we have our building blocks and answer the question:
Q: Can God create a mountain so big He can’t move it?
A: No!
There you go. That’s the answer. It was really very simple. All of the above was just to get the word count of this post up. What? You want more? You want to know why?
[Begrudgingly commences to answer the question fully] There are a couple of things at play here in the answer. The first is that the question is asked without a full understanding of who God is and His attributes. Chiefly at stake is the fact that God is omnipotent which means that He is all powerful. This is an attribute that helps to define God. If He were not omnipotent He would cease to be God. If God created an object that prevented Him from being able to exert His omnipotence upon that object, He could not be considered to be omnipotent and, therefore, not God. Another attribute of God is that He is unchanging. If he were to become less than omnipotent He would fundamentally change and, therefore, cease to be God. The object He created could not become God because God is unique and that is yet another attribute of God. Also, even if the object were infused with all the attributes of God that effort would fail because at least two Divine attributes are those of eternality and uniqueness, which it could not have. The object, therefore, could never become God or supersede God.
For God to be able to create an object so big that He no longer exerted dominion over it would be to violate His nature. This is a categorical error. It is like the example above wherein a circle cannot become a square and still be a circle. Both cannot be true at the same time. Circle = square = never. This violates the law of non-contradiction. An all powerful God cannot be NOT all-powerful. Thankfully, God has created a logical universe and, as part of His nature, operates logically. He cannot, therefore, create something so big that he no longer has control over it.
So in short we can say, “No. God cannot create a mountain so big that He can not move it because it violates His nature such that He could not longer be God if He were to do so.”
This question and its line of reasoning is often referred to classically as the Omnipotence Paradox. There are various arguments and lines of reasoning to address this paradox. Hopefully the one I have provided is helpful to you.
