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Tuesday, June 13, 2017

The omnipotent genie

Some Arminians try to turn tables on Calvinists by claiming that the Arminian God is more sovereign than the Calvinist God. A God who can give humans autonomy is more sovereign than a God who can't. A God who knows the future without foreordaining the future is more sovereign than a God who can't.

One problem with that retort is that it begs the question of whether that is, in fact, possible.

But there's another problem with that riposte. Suppose we take it to a logical extreme. Can God make a genie that he can't control? If God can't make a genie that he can't control, then God is less powerful. 

Can God make a genie who's more powerful than God? If he can't, then God's not omnipotent.  

If an Arminian balks at these hypotheticals, then he needs to explain his own comparison doesn't suffer from the same fallacies. 

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