(September 9, 2020 at 7:25 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(August 26, 2020 at 12:42 pm)Grandizer Wrote: The basic answer is he can't be anything but what he is. As God is considered to be complete in goodness, then as lying is a deviation from goodness, then God cannot lie as God would then have to be incomplete in goodness.
Or something like that. I'm sure I got the wording wrong somewhere there.
Either way, not much of a challenge for Christians. They'll happily concede God can't do everything because in their view that doesn't take away from his omnipotence.
If memory serves, Aquinas expressed it as God can't do anything that is against his nature. It was a pretty tidy position for Aquinas to take since, for the purposes of the argument, he defined what God's nature was.
If you make up the rules as you go, you can never lose the game.
Boru
Well, yeah, not sure if that's a deviation from saying that God cannot lie because God cannot deviate from the good (i.e., cannot do what is against its nature). For Aquinas, God's goodness and God's nature are intertwined.
