AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172)

## Learning Outcomes

- Define the main divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence
- Explain the difference between God being eternal and God being everlasting
- Analyse why the paradox of the stone challenges omnipotence
- Evaluate how the Euthyphro dilemma challenges divine goodness
- Assess whether an omniscient God is compatible with free human freedom
- Build stronger 12-mark and 25-mark answers through precise comparison and evaluation

## AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172) Syllabus

For the AQA A-Level Philosophy (7172), you are expected to understand the concept and nature of God, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that God is traditionally described as omnipotent, omniscient and supremely good (omnibenevolent)
- Explain different meanings of these divine attributes rather than giving vague religious descriptions
- Identify the distinction between God as timeless (eternal) and God as within time (everlasting)
- Understand the paradox of the stone as a challenge to the coherence of omnipotence
- Understand the Euthyphro dilemma as a challenge to the coherence of divine goodness
- Explain the compatibility, or incompatibility, of an omniscient God and free human beings
- Evaluate whether the traditional concept of God is coherent when these attributes are taken together

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What does it mean to say that God is omnipotent, and does it mean God can do the logically impossible?
2. What is the difference between God being eternal and God being everlasting?
3. How does the paradox of the stone challenge the idea of omnipotence?
4. What is the Euthyphro dilemma, and why is it a problem for omnibenevolence?
5. Does divine omniscience make human free will impossible?

## Introduction

The Nature of God topic is about more than listing impressive divine qualities. In AQA Philosophy, the real task is to ask whether the traditional concept of God is actually coherent. A being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, supremely good, and either outside time or present through all time sounds straightforward at first. Once the concepts are analysed carefully, however, tensions appear.

This is why this topic is central to Paper 2. Short questions often test precise definitions, while 12-mark and 25-mark questions test whether you can explain the distinctions and then evaluate whether the divine attributes are individually clear and jointly consistent.

> **Key Term: divine attributes**
> The essential qualities traditionally ascribed to God, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and a particular relationship to time.

### Omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence

In classical theism, God is often understood as the greatest conceivable being, or a maximally great being. That idea leads naturally to the three core attributes on this part of the specification: **omnipotence**, **omniscience**, and **omnibenevolence**. The exam expects definition first, then analysis.

> **Key Term: omnipotence**
> The property of being all-powerful; often understood in A-Level Philosophy as the power to do all that is logically possible.
>
> **Key Term: omniscience**
> The property of being all-knowing, often explained as knowledge of all truths.
>
> **Key Term: omnibenevolence**
> The property of being supremely good or perfectly good.

The first trap is vagueness. Students often write "God is very powerful, knows everything and is good." That is too weak. Philosophers are asking what these claims actually mean.

For **omnipotence**, there are at least two broad interpretations. The absolute interpretation says God can do anything whatsoever. The more careful interpretation, associated with Aquinas, says God can do anything that is logically possible. This distinction matters because "making a square circle" is not a difficult task that requires extra power. It is a contradiction in terms. If the task itself is impossible, failure to do it does not obviously show weakness.

This leads to the **paradox of the stone**: can God create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it? If yes, then there is something God cannot do, namely lift the stone. If no, then there is something God cannot do, namely create such a stone. Either way, omnipotence seems impossible.

The strongest classical reply is that the paradox is not about a real task at all. It combines incompatible conditions into one sentence. "A stone an omnipotent being cannot lift" is like "a married bachelor." It does not describe a genuine possibility. Aquinas therefore limits omnipotence to what is logically possible.

That reply is stronger than many students think, but it is not a complete victory. Critics can say that redefining omnipotence as "able to do all logical possibilities" looks like a retreat from the ordinary meaning of "all-powerful." The response is that philosophy is not interested in ordinary exaggeration. It wants a coherent concept. A coherent definition may be narrower but philosophically stronger.

For **omniscience**, the basic definition is simpler: God knows all truths. But that immediately raises questions. Does God know future free actions? Does God know them infallibly? If so, can humans still do otherwise?

For **omnibenevolence**, AQA often uses the phrase **supremely good**. This is useful because divine goodness should not be reduced to niceness or kindness. The claim is stronger: God is morally perfect. Some thinkers treat goodness as one perfection among others; others argue that God's goodness is bound up with all his other attributes. A perfectly wise and perfectly powerful God should also be perfectly good.

Yet this raises a deep issue. What makes God's commands good? If goodness just means "whatever God commands," morality seems arbitrary. If God commands what is already good, then goodness seems independent of God. This is the Euthyphro problem, discussed later.

A common examiner criticism is that students explain each attribute separately but do not show how they interact. On this topic, interaction is everything. Omnipotence meets logic. Omniscience meets free will. Omnibenevolence meets morality and evil.

> **Test Tip:** In a 5-mark or 12-mark answer, define the attribute first in one clean sentence, then immediately add the main qualification or challenge. That shows precision and analysis together.

### Eternal or everlasting: God's relationship to time

A very common confusion is treating **eternal** and **everlasting** as synonyms. In everyday speech they can overlap. In philosophy of religion, they are different and must be kept separate.

> **Key Term: eternal**
> Existing outside time altogether, with no succession of moments.
>
> **Key Term: everlasting**
> Existing within time without beginning or end, so that life continues through temporal succession forever.

Boethius gives the classic timeless view: eternity is the complete, simultaneous possession of endless life. The key word is **simultaneous**. A timeless God does not move from past to present to future. God possesses life all at once. Aquinas is usually linked to this view too.

Why do philosophers support timelessness? One reason is perfection. Change seems to imply moving from one state to another. Usually that means either improvement or decline. But a perfect being should not need improvement and should not be capable of decline. Timelessness also fits divine othernessence. If God created the universe, then God is not just one more item inside the universe's timeline.

Timelessness also offers a possible answer to the free will problem. If God is outside time, God does not literally know future events as future. God sees all times in one eternal present. So, defenders argue, divine knowledge is not foreknowledge in the ordinary sense.

However, timelessness creates other problems. Can a timeless being act? Action seems to involve sequence: first an intention, then an effect. Creation seems to involve "before the universe" and "after the universe begins." Prayer also seems difficult. If God is outside time, how can God respond to events as they occur?

This is why Swinburne defends **everlastingness** instead. On this view, God exists through every moment of time, always has existed, and always will exist. God can know what is happening now, respond to prayer, act in sequence, and have a personal relationship with creatures. That makes religious practice easier to understand.

But everlastingness has costs. If God is in time, then God seems to change. If God changes, some argue that God is less perfect or less immutable than classical theism requires. There is also a creation problem: if God is in time, did God create time itself? If not, then perhaps there is something God did not create.

The time debate matters because it affects the other attributes. A timeless God may better preserve perfection and foreknowledge. An everlasting God may better explain action and relationship.

Stump and Kretzmann try to defend compatibility between timeless divine knowledge and human freedom using the idea that God sees all temporal events simultaneously from eternity. The key move is this: God does not know my action "before" I do it, because for a timeless God there is no "before." God eternally sees the act that I freely choose.

This is clever, but not problem-free. Critics ask: even if God's knowledge is not earlier than my act, is it still infallible? If God eternally knows that I choose X, can I really choose not-X? The issue becomes whether infallible knowledge fixes the act, or merely reflects it.

> **Key Term: divine foreknowledge**
> God's knowledge of what human beings will do, especially their future choices.
>
> **Test Tip:** If an exam question asks you to compare eternal and everlasting, do not just define them. Show the trade-off: timelessness helps with perfection and perhaps foreknowledge, while everlastingness helps with divine action, prayer and personhood.

### Challenges to coherence: stone paradox and Euthyphro dilemma

The specification is clear that you must know arguments for the incoherence of the concept of God. "Incoherent" means the concept contains contradiction or confusion.

> **Key Term: incoherent**
> Internally contradictory or conceptually inconsistent.

The **paradox of the stone** attacks omnipotence. Its force is not that we have discovered a physically hard task for God. Its force is logical. It aims to show that the very phrase "all-powerful" generates contradiction.

A weak response is to say "God can do both." That fails, because the contradiction remains. A stronger response is to deny that pseudo-tasks count as tasks. Aquinas' approach is therefore the standard A-Level answer: omnipotence covers all logical possibilities, not contradictions.

The key evaluation point is whether this saves omnipotence or changes the subject. A strong defence says it saves the only version of omnipotence worth having. A strong criticism says a being restricted by logic is not absolutely supreme. The reply is that logic is not an external force over God; contradictions are simply not genuine possibilities.

The **Euthyphro dilemma** attacks divine goodness as the basis of morality.

> **Key Term: Euthyphro dilemma**
> The question of whether actions are good because God commands them, or whether God commands them because they are good.

If actions are good because God commands them, morality seems arbitrary. God could command cruelty and it would count as good. That makes goodness depend on will alone. Many philosophers think that is unacceptable, because moral truths would become unstable.

If God commands actions because they are good, then goodness appears independent of God. In that case, God is not the source of morality but a recogniser of it. That weakens the idea that God's omnibenevolence grounds moral value.

A common theistic response is to reject both horns as too simple. God neither invents goodness arbitrarily nor submits to an external moral law. Instead, goodness is grounded in God's nature. God commands in line with a necessarily good nature. This is a serious response because it avoids arbitrariness without making morality external.

Still, the problem does not disappear completely. Critics ask what "God's nature is good" means. If "good" already has content independent of God, then the second horn may return. If "good" just means "like God's nature," the account risks circularity.

A further issue is whether scriptural portrayals of divine punishment, vengeance or destruction fit omnibenevolence. Even if you do not develop a full problem of evil essay here, it is useful to note the pressure: supreme goodness is not a harmless label. It must survive moral scrutiny.

### Omniscience and free human beings

This is one of the most exam-friendly areas because it combines definition, argument, objection and response very clearly.

The apparent contradiction runs like this:

1. If God is omniscient, God knows infallibly what I will do tomorrow.
2. If God already knows infallibly what I will do, I cannot do otherwise.
3. If I cannot do otherwise, I am not free.
4. Therefore, divine omniscience is incompatible with free human beings.

The reasoning seems strong because it relies on infallibility. If God can be wrong, he is not omniscient. If God cannot be wrong, then my future seems fixed.

One response is to say that **knowledge does not cause actions**. God's knowing that I will choose X does not make me choose X. This point is useful but incomplete. The problem is not mainly causation. The problem is necessity. Even if God's knowledge does not force me, can I really do otherwise if God's belief cannot be false?

A second response is the timelessness solution already discussed. Boethius and later defenders argue that God does not foresee future acts from an earlier time. God sees all actions eternally as present. So the model is not prediction but direct vision.

This helps with one issue: it removes the image of God "looking ahead" and fixing events in advance. But it may not solve the whole problem. If God's eternal knowledge is infallible, my action still seems settled.

A third response, associated with everlasting views like Swinburne's, is to rethink omniscience itself. Perhaps omniscience means knowing everything that can be known. Future free acts are not yet facts to be known in advance in the same way as present and past facts. If so, God's not knowing them as fixed facts does not count against omniscience.

This is attractive because it protects libertarian freedom and makes God more personal and responsive. However, critics say it weakens traditional omniscience. If God does not know exactly what I will freely do, many believers will think something significant has been given up.

The best evaluative judgement usually avoids extremes. The conflict is sharpest if we hold all three claims together: God is infallibly omniscient, future-tense propositions about free acts already have determinate truth values, and freedom requires the ability to do otherwise. If one of those assumptions is revised, compatibility becomes easier to defend.

For exam purposes, that is an excellent analytical move. It shows you understand that philosophical disagreements often depend on hidden assumptions.

> **Test Tip:** In 25-mark essays on omniscience and freedom, do not stop at "God knows, therefore no free will." Analyse the steps. Ask whether knowledge causes action, whether infallibility implies necessity, and whether timeless knowledge differs from foreknowledge.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Nature of God topic asks whether the traditional divine attributes are intelligible and mutually consistent
- Omnipotence is usually defined carefully as the power to do all logically possible things
- The paradox of the stone challenges the coherence of omnipotence by generating contradiction
- Aquinas responds that contradictions are not real tasks and so do not limit divine power
- Omniscience is usually defined as knowledge of all truths
- Omnibenevolence means supreme or perfect goodness, not merely kindness
- The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether actions are good because God commands them or whether God commands them because they are good
- A common theistic response is that goodness is grounded in God's necessarily good nature
- Eternal means timeless and outside time, while everlasting means within time but without beginning or end
- Boethius and Aquinas are associated with timelessness, while Swinburne is associated with everlastingness
- Divine omniscience appears to conflict with human freedom if God infallibly knows future actions
- Timeless knowledge is one attempted solution, but debate remains over whether infallible knowledge still fixes human choices

## Key Terms and Concepts

- divine attributes
- omnipotence
- omniscience
- omnibenevolence
- eternal
- everlasting
- divine foreknowledge
- incoherent
- Euthyphro dilemma


Metaphysics of God - Nature of God