The Omnipotence Paradox

I was recently asked if God could make a rock he couldn't move. It's a pretty cliche question coming from people who want a quick answer about God but don't want to stop and study the magnificent Lord.

There are some who strike a pose within the intellectual community to attempt a complete summary of the subject. J.L. Cowan wrote "The Paradox of Omnipotence Revisited" and proposed the following:

(1) Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift.
(2) If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot lift the stone in question).
(3) If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent (since He cannot create the stone in question).
(4) Therefore God is not omnipotent.

Yet Mr. Cowan's assumption is that his proposal is the absolute, with no variance. Thomas Aquinas, however, would question Mr. Cowan's theory based upon the fact that he does not fully grasp what omnipotence truly means.

I like CS Lewis' words, stating that just because a person invents a preposterous statements and tries to affix authority about God to it, it must be true: "not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God".

God is not the author of confusion, nor is His might limited to our small fantasies and bauble-type thinking. The God of the Bible is beyond comprehension, giving us but a glimpse of Hios majesty in the Bible.

Since I have never seen the far side of Venus, do I invent questions to doubt its existence? Science cannot explain fully the makings of gravity, and can actually write many journals on the doubts of its existence; does that make it so? I myself could give you hundreds of reasons - very digestible ones at that - on why a Boeing 747 could never lift off the ground. Yet the truth is there.

And so is the Truth, known as God.