Lewis: power's outer limits

Sunday, November 22, 2009
    Commemoration of Cecilia, Martyr at Rome, c.230
    Commemoration of Clive Staples Lewis, Spiritual Writer, 1963
Meditation:
    Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”
    —Genesis 18:13-14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    God’s omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not 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 remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. 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.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Problem of Pain, New York: Macmillan, 1944, p. 16 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, what You have promised, You will do. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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