> > God also can't sin, do evil, or generally act contrary to His nature. As well, He "can't" perform logical absurdities (like make square circles). This does not slight His omnipotence. He can do what can be done. Being suprised is not an attribiute of Power, but it would diminish an attribute of omniscience. God being omnicient, then, is not surprised.
>
> I've always thought overly rigourous studies of a wholly transcendant being's "omnipotence" and "omnicience" to be a little bit silly. We have this very human tendency to think of God in terms of human power and understanding multiplied by some incredibly large number, and for some reason which I never understood, philosophy and theology holds that divine power is subject to the same qualitative (ie logical) limits as human power, though it has no quantitative limits on what it can logically do.
>
> I've never understood why the rules of logic, along with the bounds of time and space, are not simply thought of as a creation of God that he can disregard at will. I don't even see a compelling reason why a transcendant God would have to obey the principle of non-contradiction.
> (For those who don't know, the principle of non-contradiction, which pretty much needs to hold for a logician to be able to make sense of anything says a statement and its negation cannot both at the same time be true, eg I cannot be sitting in this chair at the same instant I am not sitting in this chair) I therefore see no reason why God can't suffer or be suprised. Maybe through faith or reason we may decide that we don't think he *will* do these things, but that doesn't mean that he is unable to; it simply means he doesn't want to.
>
> Bal"and not at the same time not-Balanthalus"anthalus

GAH! You spoiled it! When we get ten Google bus riders in a row, we can close the dead dead dead Forum 1.

Now we have to start all over.

-FP