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“My God is so big, so strong and so mighty there’s nothing that he cannot do.”
It’s too easy to ruin this beloved children’s song. One friend of mine is in the habit of singing, “My dog is so big, so strong and so mighty there’s nothing that he cannot do (woof woof)”. That friend has a lot to answer for (and a disappointingly small dog)—once you’ve heard his version it’s hard not to sing it by mistake.
If no one has ever ruined that song for you before, then, I’m sorry—but it gets worse. We might be used to singing that there’s nothing that God cannot do and shouting, “That’s true”. Except, well... it’s not exactly true. And it’s good that it’s not true—because the God who can’t do things is much greater than the God who is genuinely capable of anything.
This might come as a surprise, because being able to do anything seems like part of the most basic definition of who God is. After all, one of the theological terms we use to describe God is “omnipotent”. That word is basically two Latin words stuck together: the word for power, strength or ability (potentia) and the word for “all” (omnis). So “omnipotent” means having all power, which can easily be expressed as “being able to do anything”.
The God who can’t do things is much greater than the God who is genuinely capable of anything.
That’s a perfectly good explanation, but it’s not very precise. The limits of this explanation are highlighted by a hypothetical question that sceptics sometimes ask: “Can God make a rock that’s too heavy for him to lift?” If you answer “no” then there’s something God can’t do—so he’s not omnipotent. On the other hand, if you answer “yes” then God’s not omnipotent either, because there is at least the possibility of something he can’t do. “So,” says the sceptic, “your omnipotent God cannot exist”. Which is true, if by omnipotent you mean “God can do anything” with absolutely no exceptions. But it doesn’t mean that.
After all, the Bible itself contains the phrase “God cannot”. In 2 Timothy 2:13 we read that God “cannot disown himself”. I talk about the significance of that in my book, 12 Things God Can’t Do, but for now it simply proves that there is at least one thing that God can’t do. So all that effort in coming up with a question about a rock in the hope that God won’t be able to lift it turns out to be a waste of time. Neither the Bible nor the Christian tradition has ever really claimed that “there’s nothing that he cannot do” in that absolute sense.
To be unable to do wrong is a strength even if it is expressed as an inability.
“Sure”, you might be thinking to yourself, “but that’s cheating. Those things don’t count”. After all, denying God is the mark of a fool in Scripture (Psalm 14:1), and who wants a foolish God? To say that God cannot deny his own existence—or that he cannot lie, or that he cannot be tempted by evil—is a good thing. In the words of Anselm, the tenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury:
He who is capable of these things is capable of what is not for his good, and of what he ought not to do; and the more capable of them he is, the more power have adversity and perversity against him; and the less has he himself against these.
Which is really a way of saying that some sorts of ability are really just weaknesses. To be unable to do wrong is a strength even if it is expressed as an inability.
But there are also things God can’t do that we tend to think of as good things to be able to do. Take this statement, for example: God cannot learn. How is that a good thing? After all, if “Nick cannot learn” had been written on my school report, I wouldn’t have been keen to take it home to my parents. But thinking about why it is that God cannot learn can actually help us to see his glory more clearly.
Try thinking of it like this: imagine a water barrel, like you might find in a garden or allotment. If we were told that this barrel cannot hold any more water than it currently does, we could imagine lots of possible reasons for that. It might already be completely full, so that it is physically impossible to add any further liquid: there is simply no space. It might be split, such that any new water will just spill out. Or there might be a blockage in the only opening to the container and that stops any more water getting in.
My inability to learn came from my limitations. But when we say that God can’t learn, it’s not for any of those reasons.
If you think about the brain as being like that barrel, and information as water, we can think of similar reasons why someone might not be able to learn. When I was at school, sometimes my brain just felt crammed full and it couldn’t accept any more information. It was at capacity. Once I banged my head so hard in the playground that for a while I didn’t even know what day it was—information kept leaking away. Much of the time I was so busy thinking about sport that I wasn’t paying attention and the information couldn’t get in, like with the blocked drainpipe.
In each of those cases, my inability to learn came from my limitations. But when we say that God can’t learn, it’s not for any of those reasons.
Let’s stay with the idea of a water barrel. Try to imagine one much too big to fit in your garden. In fact, imagine that this barrel already contains all the water in the world—more than that, it contains all the water in the universe. In this case, it is impossible for that barrel to get any fuller—not because of any limitation in its capacity to hold water, but because there simply isn’t any more water to add.
That is what we mean when we say that God cannot learn. It’s not because of a lack of power on his part but because there is no conceivable kind of knowledge or piece of data that he does not already possess.
This is an adapted extract from 12 Things God Can’t Do by Nick Tucker. Previously a Bible teacher at Oak Hill Theological College, Nick now serves as the vicar of St Bartholomew’s Edgbaston. In this intriguing book, he explores 12 things that God can’t do, which all express aspects of his nature and character which we can embrace with relief, celebrate with joy and worship with awe. You will marvel both at God’s otherness and at how he became one of us in the person of Jesus.
Nick Tucker is Vicar of Bishop Hannington Church in Hove, UK. He is married to Sam and they have three children. Previously he taught at Oak Hill Theological College and holds a doctorate from the University of Stirling.
