Omnipotence is "all-powerful," but the same tradition calls God "pure act": without any unrealized potential. Those pull against each other, since power is usually the capacity to do what is not yet done. And whatever power comes to, exercising it (creating, sustaining, intervening) is an act, and acting runs through time, place, and substance. The section presses both seams.

*What the tradition holds.* Theists call God omnipotent and gloss the word as *all-powerful*. *Omnipotens* is *omnis* + *potentia*: all-potency, every capacity. But in the Aristotelian frame the tradition inherits, potency is the unrealized side of act: the capacity not yet exercised, what could be otherwise but is not yet. And the same tradition defines God as *actus purus*: pure act, entirely without potency. Aquinas is explicit that in God there is no potentiality, no unrealized capacity, no movement from what is not yet actual to what is (ST I.3.1–2; I.9.1). The central attribute is therefore held in two directions at once. The standard Thomistic resolution distinguishes active power from passive potency: God has unlimited active power without unrealized passive potency (ST I.25.1; (Stump, Eleonore, 2003); (Dolezal, James E., 2017)), so that the gloss *all-powerful* reads *omnipotens* against active power rather than against unrealized capacity.

Around this resolution the classical doctrine assembles a set of reinforcing claims about how that power operates. God created the universe *ex nihilo*, with no antecedent matter, time, or space (Aquinas, ST I.45; cf. Genesis 1:1 NRSVUE). God conserves all things in being moment by moment (ST I.104). And God concurs with creaturely action, so that creaturely causation occurs through divine causation rather than alongside it (ST I.105; (Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, 1983)). God also acts in history through miracles, in which divine causation overrides ordinary causal regularity (Hume, David, (1748) 1999); (Richard Swinburne, 1970); (Robert A. Larmer, 2014). Ash'arite occasionalism (the view that God is the sole genuine cause, creaturely events being only the occasions of God's acting) is the parallel development in the Islamic tradition (Al-Ghazali, *Incoherence of the Philosophers* XVII; (Richard M. Frank, 1992); (Frank Griffel, 2009)).

The tradition then refines the scope of the power itself. On Aquinas's canonical refinement, omnipotence is the capacity to bring about whatever does not involve contradiction (ST I.25; with (George I. Mavrodes, 1963) and (Harry G. Frankfurt, 1964) on the stone-paradox). On Geach's reading, the more theologically traditional term is *almighty* (P. T. Geach, 1973). Wierenga -(Wierenga, Edward R., 1989) develops the contemporary analytic account. And on the most ambitious reading, divine power extends to the modal structure itself (Leftow, Brian, 2012). Taken at that most ambitious reading, the doctrine names a being whose power is comprehensive enough to author what is possible, sustained moment-by-moment in everything that obtains, and unrestricted by any condition external to itself.

*What cannot be answered.* Six questions open onto what omnipotence, in the form structural reasoning can take up, cannot account for. The structural pressure here has two layers. First, the active-power refinement preserves the gloss but not the work: active power is power-*to*-actualize-this-rather-than-that, and what divine power is asked to do (create, conserve, govern, intervene, answer) has its content in the actualization of one determinate state rather than another. Without a contrast between the state actualized and the state not actualized, the verb *actualize* loses determinate content; the doctrine of pure act, taken strictly, removes that contrast and leaves the term *power* without the modal contrast power consists in. Second, causation, on the analyses [§2.4](<2.4 Structural Requirement.md>) develops in detail, is the carrying of influence forward by a being (Φ) through an interval (S) in a temporal direction (T), and the classical God is defined as without any of the three. The six pressures run one at the level of the predicate, five at the level of the conditions causation-talk runs on.

**Q1.** *How does creation cause a world, if there is no state it brings the world out of?* *Creatio ex nihilo* holds that God brought the universe into being with no antecedent matter, time, or space. Aquinas (ST I.45) develops the doctrine carefully: creation is not a change, since change requires a subject that undergoes the change, and prior to creation there is no subject. Creation is the production of being itself, with nothing antecedent for the production to occur in. The reply preserves the doctrine against the classical objection that nothing comes from nothing. The concern here is the cost of the preservation. Causation, on the analysis given, is a transition from a state in which the effect does not obtain to one in which it does. If creation is not a transition (if there is no antecedent state for the transition to be from) then creation, on the classical reading, is not a case of the structural relation the analysis examines. The classical reply is that *cause* applies to creation analogically rather than univocally, and the analogical application preserves what the term performs. The reply is genuinely available, and [§6.8.3](<6.8.3 Describability.md>) takes its measure. The point this section adds is that what *create* names, on the doctrine fully stated, is closer to a primitive of divine doing than to an analyzable case of causation, and the difference is precisely the structural conditions the doctrine has placed beyond divine being. There is a further pressure on the modal side. If creator-status is essential to God (if God is necessarily a creator) then in every world where God exists, God creates; if God exists necessarily, creation is necessary. The Thomist's standard distinction between God's act-considered-in-itself (necessary) and the act's *terminus ad extra* (its outward effect toward creation, which is contingent) requires a real ground for the distinction in God, which strict simplicity disallows. Mullins -(Mullins, R. T., 2013); -(Mullins, R. T., 2016) and Tomaszewski -(Tomaszewski, Christopher, 2019) press this from inside the literature. The doctrine has wanted necessary creator-status and contingent creation simultaneously, and these are two commitments joined only by the term *one act*. Pruss and Rasmussen's necessary-creating/contingent-order distinction (*Necessary Existence*, -(Pruss, Alexander R., and Joshua L. Rasmussen, 2018), ch. 5) offers the canonical middle position: God necessarily creates *some* world (creator-status is essential), but creates this particular contingent order among alternatives (the necessity attaches to the creator-status, not to the specific creation). In the power register, the distinction deflects the modal-collapse concern by locating contingency in the terminus of the creative act rather than in the act itself. The concern for the Pruss/Rasmussen reply at Q1 is whether the selection among contingent termini itself requires the directed-act structure creation-as-power consists in: the being must be positioned to select (S), must transition through the selection (T), and must be the substantial bearer of both the creator-status and the selecting act (Φ). The necessary-creating/contingent-order distinction shifts the modal-collapse concern from the level of creator-status to the level of selection, where the chapter's structural analysis applies at full force.

**Q2.** *How does power make a thing possible, when making it already takes its being possible?* Aquinas (ST I.25.3) restricts omnipotence to what is logically possible: God cannot make a square circle, not because divine power is limited but because *square circle* names no possibility for power to range over. Descartes (Letters to Mesland 1644) takes the opposite turn: God's power extends to the eternal truths themselves, including logical and mathematical necessity. The contemporary mainstream sides with the Thomistic restriction (Richard Swinburne, 1977); (Wierenga, Edward R., 1989); (Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, 1983). The modal-frame question is worked from the necessity side at [§6.3.1](<6.3.1 Necessity.md>) and from the logic-grounding side at [§5.1.9](<5.1.9 Transcendental Argument.md>); the concern returns here in the form [§3.4](<3.4 Reality and Nature Are One.md>) revisits. The Thomistic restriction either makes logical necessity a condition on divine power, in which case the deepest modal facts are not products of divine activity ([§6.3.1](<6.3.1 Necessity.md>)), or extends divine power to the modal structure itself (Leftow, Brian, 2012), in which case the conditions any exercise of power presupposes are themselves the products of an exercise. The first horn keeps coherence by surrendering scope; the second keeps scope at the cost of self-grounding the doctrine has not made structurally tractable.

**Q3.** *What is unlimited in a power confined to possibilities it never authored?* Frankfurt -(Harry G. Frankfurt, 1964) raises the puzzle in its sharpest form: can God create a stone too heavy for God to lift? The Thomistic resolution is well-developed (George I. Mavrodes, 1963); (Alvin Plantinga, 1967): omnipotence is the capacity to bring about logically possible states of affairs, and a stone too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift is not a logically possible state of affairs. The resolution is correct as far as it goes. The concern this section adds is what it reveals: omnipotence is defined relative to a modal space whose status is what [§3.2.6](<3. Convergence.md>) has put in question. The paradox dissolves under the Thomistic restriction; what the restriction leaves is a doctrine of omnipotence indexed to the modal structure, with the being's authorship over the modal structure either denied (collapsing scope) or affirmed (collapsing the structure). The pattern generalizes. The *stone paradox* is one of three structurally analogous cases the tradition treats under the same restriction: the immovable stone (Φ-logic), the square circle (S-logic), and the past-altering act (T-logic). The three are analogous rather than identical (the immovable stone fails by modal-conceptual necessity, the square circle by geometric necessity, the past-altering act by temporal-logical necessity) but the Thomistic restriction dissolves each the same way, by declaring it not a possibility for power to range over; what the restriction concedes, taken across the three together, is that what *power* can do is indexed to the three structural logics [§2.10](<2.10 Three Logical Strata.md>) isolates: the modal structure any exercise of power presupposes. The limit the theist concedes so readily in logic, that omnipotence reaches neither the immovable stone nor the square circle nor the altered past, was a limit of structure all along: what logic forbids in the three cases is what the structural logics of substance, extension, and succession forbid. The paradox is a symptom; the concern is the condition the symptom registers.

**Q4.** *How does a cause come before its effect, if it stands at no time at all?* Causation runs in a temporal direction: the cause precedes or is simultaneous with the effect, and the effect does not precede the cause. The analyses [§2.6](<2.6 Triconditionality of Nature.md>) develops are explicit on this point, and even the most permissive contemporary accounts (David Lewis, 1973); (Salmon, Wesley C., 1984); (Dowe, Phil, 2000) preserve the asymmetry as constitutive. The classical God, defined as atemporal, has no temporal location relative to which the *from*-state of any causal act is before and the *to*-state is after. The doctrine of eternal causation (God's act of creation, conservation, and governance is one eternal act) addresses the difficulty by setting aside temporal direction (Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann, 1981); (Leftow, Brian, 1991); (Leftow, Brian, 2012). The concern here is the one [§6.3.2](<6.3.2 Eternity.md>) presses for eternity and [§6.4.2](<6.4.2 Knowledge.md>) for knowledge: setting aside the temporal asymmetry preserves the term *cause* and removes the structure that distinguishes causation from a static relation between abstracta. A logical entailment between premises and conclusion does not *cause* the conclusion in the sense the doctrine of providence trades on. The doctrine wants the relation between God and creation to be more than logical entailment, and the more is precisely T.

**Q5.** *By what power does a being produce the very conditions its power runs on?* Q2 raises the modal-scope question; Q5 returns to its sharpest form. The deepest version of the doctrine extends divine power to the conditions any exercise of power presupposes: God authors what is possible, not merely what is actual (Leftow, Brian, 2012). The concern here is the one [§6.7.2](<6.7.2 Causality.md>) will press at the level of agency: to author the modal frame is to do something whose conditions appear to require T, S, and Φ: a transition between not-having-authored and having-authored, a position from which the authorship is exercised, a substantial being through which the activity runs. The pressure runs equally on the target side. Creating X presupposes that X is possible to create, since *create* names the actualization of what is antecedently possible: the verb has no determinate target where the target has no antecedent modal standing, and the actualization-relation runs from a possibility into an actuality of that possibility. The classical reply that divine creation establishes the possibility-of-X in establishing X itself preserves the doctrine by making the conferral of possibility and the conferral of actuality one act, and the move is genuinely available; what it does not preserve is the difference between *create* and *be*, since the verb's content depends on the modal contrast its target carried before the operation. To create-the-possibility-of-X simultaneously with actualizing-X is to perform two operations whose ordering the doctrine has flattened: the first supplies the modal range the second operates within, and the simultaneity preserves the verb at the cost of the structure the verb's intelligibility runs on. Agent-side and target-side conditions converge on the same modal field: the field that hosts the act and the field that supplies the target are one field, and a field that hosts and supplies the exercise of power cannot be the exercise's product. To preserve *author* while removing those conditions is to keep the verb and lose the structure that gave it its content. Pruss -(Pruss, A. R., 2011), Mullins -(Mullins, R. T., 2016), and Mullins and Byrd -(R. T. Mullins and Shannon Byrd, 2022) raise structural concerns from inside the literature. The point this section adds, from the side of power specifically, is that the most ambitious version of the doctrine (omnipotence over modality) names what Nature is and locates it in a being beyond Nature. Nature is what underwrites possibility because Nature is what possibility is the modal status of. Pruss's PSR pressure runs symmetrically against the inversion. If Nature underwrites possibility because it is the necessary modal structure, the PSR demand returns at the level of Nature itself: what grounds Nature's having the specific structural conditions it has (T, S, Φ in their particular constitutions) rather than other conditions or none (*The Principle of Sufficient Reason*, -(Pruss, Alexander R., 2006); *Infinity, Causation, and Paradox*, -(Alexander R. Pruss, 2018))? The section's terminus (*Nature has them as a necessary fact*) is what Pruss identifies as the PSR-violating move: treating brute structural necessity as the terminus of explanation without asking what grounds the necessity's specific character. The asymmetry the inversion requires (that Nature's structural necessity is less explanatorily objectionable than a God's) depends on a reply to Pruss's PSR demand that the book's positive account carries at [§7.7](<7.7 Cosmic History.md>) (resting on [§2.8](<2.8 The Whole Line.md>)).

**Q6.** *How can a creature do otherwise than God moves it to do?* If divine causation conserves all things in being moment by moment (ST I.104) and concurs with all creaturely action (ST I.105; (Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, 1983)), the question is whether creaturely actions retain the not-being-determined-by-divine-causation that libertarian freedom requires. The Banezian–Molinist debate (Báñez vs Molina, 16th–17th c.; (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, 1936); (Flint, Thomas P., 1998)) is the classical site. Banezian physical premotion holds that God moves the will to its act in such a way that the act remains genuinely the creature's own; Molinism holds that divine concurrence operates through middle knowledge of what the creature would freely do. Both positions are serious; both face well-developed contemporary objections: the grounding objection against Molinism, the question of how physical premotion preserves freedom against Báñez. The concern here is parallel to those raised at [§6.3.4](<6.3.4 Impassibility.md>) and [§6.7.2](<6.7.2 Causality.md>): the doctrine wants comprehensive divine causation and genuine creaturely freedom, and the standard refinements partition the explanatory contributions in ways that preserve the verbal predicates without resolving the underlying tension.

*What is required.* The six pressures, considered together, reveal what the predicate *power* commits to. Power consists in actualizing this rather than that, and active power without a this-rather-than-that for the act to be the actualization of preserves the term while removing the modal contrast power consists in. *Creation* read as production without transition is closer to a primitive of divine doing than to the analyzable causal relation *cause* names, and the analogical defense registers the distance from causation rather than closing it. The carrying of influence runs through a bearer; a divine essence as ground stands as what exercise depends on, not as what performs the carrying. It runs across an interval, since without spatial extension between agent and patient there is nowhere for the influence to travel. And it runs in a temporal direction: eternal causation preserves the term *cause* while removing the structure that distinguishes causation from logical entailment, while the doctrine of providence requires the relation between God and creation to be more than entailment. At the deepest layer the doctrine reaches, power that authors the modal structure is power exercising the conditions it authors, and the structure does not survive the recursion; the comprehensive-providence/creaturely-freedom partition preserves the verbal predicates without dissolving the underlying tension. *Potens*, read against the conditions of its application, is the capacity Nature has to issue its potency into act; T, S, and Φ are what makes the issuing possible.

*What is inverted.* Power is what Nature does when Nature actualizes what its structure permits. The English *power* descends through Old French *poeir* from the Latin *posse*, *to be able*. The verb's root, *potis-*, names *capable, having the capacity to*. To be powerful is to have, in the being, the structural conditions for potency to issue into act: a substantial being the capacity is of (Φ), an interval the influence traverses (S), a temporal direction along which the actualization runs (T). What the doctrine of omnipotence was reaching for is the full actualized capacity of Nature: not a being outside Nature with its potency stripped, but Nature itself with its potency intact. Omnipotence requires potency; pure actuality forecloses it; the two doctrines cannot both be true in the same sense. Spelled out in full, the predicate's conditions describe Nature.


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← [6.7 Agency](<6.7 Agency.md>) | [6.7.2 Causality](<6.7.2 Causality.md>) →
