QUOMODO SIT OMNIPOTENS, CUM MULTA NON POSSIT.
The Paradox of Almightiness
Anselm raises the apparent contradiction between God's almightiness and His inability to lie, sin, or be corrupted.
But how can you be almighty if you can't do everything? Or if you can't be corrupted, can't lie, and can't make what's true into what's false — make what happened as though it didn't happen — and countless other things like this: how can you do everything?1
Inability as Weakness or Power
Anselm argues that the ability to sin or suffer is not true power but weakness, since it exposes one to greater adversity.
Or is this ability to be unable not power but weakness? For whoever can do these things can do what isn't to his advantage and what he ought not to do. And the more it can do, the more adversity and perversity I can bring against it, and the less it can withstand them. So whoever can in this way can, not by power but by weakness.
Improper Ways of Speaking
Anselm explains how everyday language uses improper expressions like 'to be' for 'not to be,' showing that speech often works by convention rather than strict logic.
For he isn't said to be able because he himself can, but because his own weakness makes something else able in him; or in some other manner of speaking, just as many things are said improperly.2 As when we use 'to be' in place of 'not to be,' and 'to do' in place of what is 'not to do,' or in place of 'to do nothing.' We often say to someone who denies that something exists: it is just as you say it is, even though it would seem more accurate to say: it is not just as you say it is not. Likewise we say: this one sits just as that one does, or: this one rests just as that one does, since 'to sit' is a kind of not doing and 'to rest' is to do nothing.
Redefining Power Through Inability
Anselm concludes that calling someone 'powerful' for being able to sin is an improper use of language, since such 'power' really means greater vulnerability to adversity.
So when someone is said to have the power to do or undergo what isn't good for them, or what they ought not to do, their inability is understood as a kind of power: because the more of this power they have, the more forcefully adversity and perversity take hold of them, and the more powerless they are against those things.
The Almightiness of the Invulnerable God
Anselm turns to prayer, confessing that God is most truly almighty precisely because He can do nothing through weakness and nothing can prevail against Him.
Therefore, Lord God, you are more truly almighty in this: that you can do nothing out of weakness, and nothing can prevail against you.34
Read the original Latin
Sed et omnipotens quamodo es, si omnia non poses? Aut si non poses corrumpi nec mentiri nec facere verum esse falsum, ut quod factum est non esse factum, et plura similiter: quomodo poses omnia?
An haec posse non est potentia sed impotentia? Nam qui haec potest, quod sibi non expedit et quod non debet potest. Quae quanto magis potest, tanto magis adversitas et perversitas possum in illum, et ipse minus contra illas. Qui ergo sic potest, non potentia potest sed impotentia.
Non enim ideo dicitur posse, quia ipse possit sed quia sue impotentia facit aliud in se posse; sive aliquo alio genere loquendi, sicut multa improprie dicuntur. Ut cum ponimus 'esse' pro 'non esse', et 'facere' pro eo quod est 'non facere', aut pro 'nihil facere'. Nam saepe dicimus ei qui rem aliquam esse negat: sic est quemadmodum dicis esse, cum magis proprie videatur dici: sic non est quemadmodum dicis non esse. Item dicimus: iste sedet sicut ille facit, aut: iste quiescit sicut ille facit, cum 'sedere' sit quiddam non facere et 'quiescere' sit nihil facere.
Sic itaque cum quis dicitur habere potentiam faciendi aut patiendi quod sibi non expedit aut quod non debet, impotentia intelligitur per potentiam; quia quo plus habet hanc potentiam, eo adversitas et perversitas in illum sunt potentiores, et ille contra eas impotentior.
Ergo domine deus, inde verius es omnipotens, quia nihil potes per impotentiam, et nihil potest contra te.
Notes
- 1 ↩The rhetorical question probes the meaning of omnipotence: whether 'doing everything' includes logically self-contradictory acts. The phrase 'et plura similiter' is rendered with 'and countless other things like this' to capture the open-ended force of the Latin.
- 2 ↩sue corrected to suae ('his own'); manuscript likely in error.
- 3 ↩Literally 'whence more truly'; rendered as 'from this' to capture the inferential force of inde pointing back to the preceding reasoning while keeping the comparative verius ('more truly') intact.
- 4 ↩Ergo is inferential here, drawing the conclusion from the previous section's argument about power-through-impotence.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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