Q&A: On God’s Ability to Limit Himself
On God’s Ability to Limit Himself
Question
In lesson 3 on free will, you talk about how the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to create gaps in information so that even He would not be able to know some of the information (what will be chosen in the future). In other words, until free will was created, all existing information was in His hands, and then He chose to create a reality in which He limits the information He is able to know.
After that, you argue that the question of whether He can create a stone that He cannot lift is a meaningless question, because there is no such concept as something that the omnipotent cannot do.
But similar to information, it could be that before the creation of free will, if someone had asked you whether God can create a reality in which He does not know everything, you would have answered, “It cannot be that the One who knows everything does not know, and therefore the question is meaningless”—but in practice He did create such a thing, free will, and by doing so He did in fact limit the information He can know.
Why, in the same way, can it not be argued that if He wanted, He could create a stone that He cannot lift? Just as He limited the amount of information He can know, why can He not limit the amount of things He can lift?
Answer
I don’t understand the question. He did not limit the information in His possession; rather, He gave us choice. Consequently, that information cannot be in His possession. If you show me a mechanism in which there is a stone such that lifting it is contradictory, then fine.
Discussion on Answer
See the columns on knowledge and choice.
It isn’t clear to me why you assume that God cannot know what depends on our choice. Why can’t the future be in His possession?