The Omni's

• God is omnipotent.
  He is all-powerful - there is nothing he cannot do.
• God is omniscient.
  He is all-knowing - there is nothing he doesn't know or isn't aware of.
• God is omnipresent.
  He exists in all places, including all of the natural, supernatural and any other worlds that may or may not exist.
• God is omnitemporal.
  He exists at all times, including the past, present and future simultaneously.
• God is omnibenevolent.
  He possesses perfect goodness

These bold claims, ironically, present very real problems. In some instances they are logically impossible, in others they are contradictory and in others they present a paradox.

A perfect example of the paradox regarding a single attribute is the question:

‘Can God create a rock so large and heavy even He cannot lift it?’

Clearly, if God is unable to create a rock so large that He can’t lift it – then He is not omnipotent; there is at least one thing He cannot do
– create the rock.
If He can create a rock so large He is unable to lift it – then He is also not omnipotent; there is at least one thing He cannot do
– lift the rock.

Other examples
This paradox is not only limited to the size and weight of a rock, the number of additional examples are only constrained by the imagination.

• Can God make a jail so secure even He cannot escape it?
• Can God make a chilli so hot He cannot eat it?

The Free Will Problem
According to Christian doctrine God gave all man free will – the free will to make whichever choices he chooses.
Now here comes the tricky part. If God knows every choice you will ever make, did you freely choose to make it? Do we really have free will or is it just an illusion?

Curiously, if God is omniscient, why did He need to call out to Adam in Genesis 3:9 “where are you?” or in Genesis 4:9 when He asked Cain “Where is your brother”.
Shouldn't He have known where these people were?

More disturbingly, if an omniscient God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden knowing full well that Adam and Eve would eat from it, did he not remove the couple’s free will and set them up for failure?
If God knew in advance they would eat from the tree and He knew his punishment on them would be severe (the introduction of death and suffering into the world for all mankind for all eternity), would that not fly in the face of His omni-benevolence?

The Apologetic
'God doesn't decide for you what decision to make, he just knows in advance what decision you will make. His knowledge of your decision does not cause you to make the decision'. This, though, stands in stark contrast to Proverbs 19:21 which tells us that no matter what choices we make, God's plan will remain unaltered. Our decisions are futile if they are in conflict with the plan of God.
Ephesians 1:11 is more explicitly put that, no matter what happens, everything is predestined according to God's purpose.
So, if God's plan is unalterable, do we really have free will? Or are we just a train running along a predetermined track?
Also, being omniscient means God can never be wrong. Any decision you make that runs contrary to God's plan would make his knowledge of the situation wrong. Your free will would thus be merely an illusion.
The doctrine of man's free will and God's omniscience is an insuperable paradox.

These were instances of paradoxes involving single attributes; what about an example showing how several attributes stand in opposition to one another?

Multiple Attribute Paradoxes

If God is omni-benevolent He would want to remove suffering and
if He is omniscient He would be aware of the suffering and
if God is omnipotent he would be able to remove suffering.
Yet suffering exists.

This paradox would demand that for suffering to exist, God could not be omni-benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent simultaneously.
The conclusion of the paradox: Both God and suffering cannot exist, suffering exists, therefore God cannot exist.

Theodicy
This attempt to reconcile God's omni-benevolence, omnipotence and omniscience is known as the problem of evil.

Or, as Epicurus, a Greek philosopher from the 3rd century BCE, put it:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Yes, I am aware of the apologetics regarding theodicy, the defence of God permitting evil in the world, and although some of the arguments are worth the time discussing, retaining all three of these omni’s also remains an insuperable paradox.

If a child died of cancer in a hospital bed, God was there (omnipresent), he was able to remove the cancer (omnipotent), he wanted to stop the child’s suffering (omni-benevolent) and he knew all along what was going to happen (omniscient) - yet the child died. So, either God is not omnipotent, not omni-benevolent, not omnipresent nor omniscient. Either God is evil or he doesn’t exist.

Divine Impeccability
Can God commit a sin?
Remember God is omnipotent - he can do absolutely anything and everything, including sinning if he wanted to.
But this would go against his absolute goodness or omni-benevolence. This is known as 'Divine Impeccability', yet another conundrum...

So, having dealt with single attribute and multiple attribute paradoxes, what about logical impossibilities?

Logical Impossibilities
Can God make a square triangle?
Can God make 1+1=3?
Can God create a being greater than himself?

The important question is:
Is God bound by the laws of logic or can he operate outside of these laws?
Apologists have a myriad of arguments ranging from the bizarre to the ridiculous in defence of these Omnipotence Paradoxes. Yet, when the dust settles and the arguments are over – can God make a square triangle?

God's divine attributes, the omni’s, are internally inconsistent, they cannot all be simultaneously true. Philosophically, when faced with this dilemma, you either need to discard one of the problematic elements or find some method to understand them in a way that could make them consistent.

Dropping one of the omni’s would significantly weaken God's position. Which one would you drop? His omnipotence? His omni-benevolence? His omnipresence?
Having realised this, God's proponents, in an attempt to resolve the situation have resorted to slightly downgrade the elevated status from omnipotence to maximally powerful. From omni-benevolence to maximally benevolent, etc.

God is maximally great as far as logic will allow. This maintains his greatness without impinging on the laws of logic.
So, can a maximally great being make a square triangle?