Volume 79, 2005
Social Justice
James D. Madden, Louis A. Mancha, Jr.
Pages 145-155
A Counterfactual Analysis in Defense of Aquinas's Inference of Omnipotence from Creation Ex Nihilo
There is a traditional view, maintained by Aquinas and others, which holds that there is a mutual entailment between the power to Create Ex Nihilo
(hereafter CEN-power) and the property of omnipotence. In his Metaphysical Disputations, however, Suarez attacks the traditional view by pointing out a serious
flaw in Aquinas’s argument. Suarez claims that there is no reason in principle why God cannot miraculously bestow CEN-power to creatures––albeit in a limited
form––even on the assumption that God cannot make creatures omnipotent. In this paper the authors argue that the debate can be resolved in favor of Aquinas;
that CEN-power does indeed strictly imply omnipotence. After clarifying a sufficient condition for the property of omnipotence, the authors argue that attention to a
modest possible worlds semantics and some interesting properties of counterfactuals are together sufficient to show that beings with CEN-power are in every case beings that are omnipotent.