Divine Omnipotence and Logical Limits

The most famous objection to omnipotence is the stone paradox: if God is omnipotent, can he make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it? If yes, there is something he cannot do (lift the stone); if no, there is already something he cannot do (make such a stone). Swinburne's response is that the paradox arises from a confused formulation of omnipotence. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to do the logically impossible — it means the ability to do anything that it is logically possible to do.

For Swinburne, the fact that God cannot make a square circle, make a stone he cannot lift, or both exist and not exist is no limitation on divine power. Logical impossibilities are not tasks that cannot be performed; they are not tasks at all. To say "God cannot make 2+2=5" is not to describe a limit on God's power but to note that "making 2+2=5" does not describe any possible state of affairs. The scope of omnipotence is the scope of the logically possible, and everything logically possible is within God's power.

Swinburne further argues that God's omnipotence is compatible with his perfect goodness: if God is perfectly good, he will never choose to do evil, not because he is prevented but because his will is perfectly aligned with the good. This is not a limit on power but a description of how a perfectly powerful being with a perfectly good will would always exercise that power. The objection that God cannot do evil therefore reveals not a weakness but the full realisation of divine perfection.

Swinburne's analysis of omnipotence appears in Chapter 9 of The Coherence of Theism (1977). His formulation follows Aquinas's classic distinction between the logically possible and the logically impossible in Summa Theologiae I.25.