Czy Bóg jest w mocy działać moralnie źle?

Abstract

Does God has power to act in morally wrong way?

This paper has four parts. First outline seven several questions concerning relation between God, his goodness and other philosophically interesting things, especially between attributes of almightiness, goodness and faith in God, different from main question of this article. Second part presents Aquinas’s account of God’s goodness, with three ways to understand it, as God’s excellence in being, with respect of His creative activity and with respect of the morality of God’s acting. Third part of the article critically examine Nelson Pike’s classical account of Aquinas-Anselm account of problem of possibility of God’s sin and the paradox of omnipotence and goodness. Last part contain argumentation that Pike’s argument is not sound. He shouldn’t so easily reconstruct Aquinas account of absolutely possible as concerning only the result of God’s creative action – some consistent state of affairs, second, the assessment of some agent’s decision/choice/possibility of acting in particular (morally wrong) way should be included in assessment of his power, and Pike paper doesn’t support enough his conclusion, that Aquinas confused second and third sense of “God cannot sin.” Alternatively to Pike’s account I distinguish fourth sense of the expression in question, present arguments that this meaning is coherent with Aquinas account of omnipotence and goodness of God as well as arguments that this is the concept of divine omnipotent goodness which is the conditions of real faith in God.

Keywords: God’s ability to sin, omnipotent goodness as necessary condition of Christian faith, God’s power and goodness, almightiness, omnipotence, paradoxes of omnipotence, Nelson Pike, Thomas Aquinas.