The rock God can't create?

Is there a rock God can’t create?

Atheists come up with all sorts of objections to the existence of God.

For example: they frequently claim that God could not be omnipotent because it can be shown that there is something God could not create. They give the example that God could not possibly create a rock which was too heavy for Him to lift. If this were true, it would mean God cannot do everything and His powers are thus limited.

 

So is it really true that God could not create a rock which was too heavy for Him to lift?

 

To explain the problem further - any rock that God creates is a material object which is subject to gravity.

Gravity is a property of material objects and the natural realm.

God as a non-natural, non-material spirit is not subject to gravity. Which means God could lift any material object He chooses to create. This means He could lift any rock of any weight. However, if, for example, He did create a rock He genuinely could not lift, then by virtue of not being able to lift that rock, there would be something He could not do and we would have to conclude He could not be omnipotent. So it would seem at first glance that atheists have revealed a no win, catch 22 situation for theists.

 

Of course, we could say that God could ‘choose’ not to be able to lift a rock because of its weight, but that doesn’t mean He can’t lift it, only that He chooses not to be able to. So that is not really a proper answer.

Is this proof of the atheist claim that an omnipotent God cannot exist?

The answer is most certainly no, because God HAS created a rock which He can lift and at the same time cannot lift. This might seem like a contradiction, but it is not.

 

All God has to do - is to incarnate Himself into material form, and enter the material realm as a full human being. And, as a full human, He would then be subject to the limits of the gravity He has created, and thus unable to lift large, heavy rocks.

God has already done this when He was incarnated as Jesus Christ.

Jesus ... fully human and fully God ... was genuinely unable, in His human incarnation, to lift large, heavy rocks (even though He had created them), just like any other human.

So, in spirit form, God was able to lift any rock He had created, but in material (human) form He was subject to gravity and was unable to lift any heavy rocks.

 

We do well not to underestimate God – God IS omnipotent, if we think He isn’t, it is due to limitations in our own powers of reasoning, not to any limited power of God or lack of God’s ingenuity.

If it is at all possible, and not something nonsensical and contradictory- God is capable of it.

 

As C S Lewis says ...

"His (God's) Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to his power. If you choose to say 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can.'... It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of his creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because his power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God."

Done