Divine Omnipotence: Aquinas and Swinburne

Abstract

Abstract The goal of this thesis is to establish whether Thomas Aquinas's conception of God's omnipotence can survive critical interaction with the views of Richard Swinburne. It first defines in detail what Aquinas thinks omnipotence consists in, and how it relates to God's other attributes. It then moves to considers Swinburne's account of omnipotence, and from this extrapolates three key divergences between the two thinker's accounts, concerning time, the possibility of ceasing to be omnipotent, and divine necessity. The thesis will conclude that, by the standards of Swinburne's own criteria, Aquinas's account of omnipotence in light of these three divergences is the more successful of the two.