God's Omnipotence and Man's Sin

Christianity’s Terminal Paradox

This paradox springs from merely two premises that, in my view, nearly all Christians (and other monotheists) consider valid.

Premise One: God is omnipotent (all-powerful, or a being than which none more powerful can be conceived).

Premise Two: Sin is definable as “acts which violate God’s will.” In short, God hates sin, and sinful acts, by definition, represent violation of God’s will.

This question unleashes the paradox: Can God’s will be violated by man?

You make a few assumptions about about what you regard is Christian orthodoxy, which I don't believe are accurate.

"This paradox springs from merely two premises that, in my view, nearly all Christians (and other monotheists) consider valid."

Most Christians are not monotheists but triniterians-- a definition of God that posits three people within something called the godhead.

"Premise One: God is omnipotent (all-powerful, or a being than which none more powerful can be conceived)."

If one's Christian belief is based on the Bible, no where do I find this claim of omnipotence in the Bible. To the contrary, the general narrative of the Bible shows God arguing, negotiating, appeasing, destroying, and getting surprised or disappointed by man. The two central stories in the Bible-- the temptation of Adam in Eden and the temptation fo Christ in the Garden-- do not imply the unfolding of a cosmic play. Rather, they strike me as events with unknown outcomes that hung on choices and actions.

"Premise Two: Sin is definable as “acts which violate God’s will.” In short, God hates sin, and sinful acts, by definition, represent violation of God’s will."

Your ideosyncratic definition of an act that violates God's will is news to me. In Article Nine of the Church of England Book of Common Prayer, sin is defined as "the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that is naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam." In other words, sin isn't an act at all, but inherent in our humanity.

The big picture, as I understand it, is that God is sovereign only in the sense that he is the creator and sustainer of all, not that he is the puppet-master of all. Thus God, the argument goes, curtailed his omnipotence to give man the gift of morality. If men were automata, morality would cease to exist as chocies would be preprogrammed. A stone, an ant, a baby, a mentally defective person are incapable of acting morally as they lack the capacity to distinguish right from wrong. Now, there is a strain within Christianity such as the Calvanists that argues that nothing happens on earth-- from the holocaust to hiccups-- without God's permissive will. But such a definition in my view doesn't address the issues of theodicy (at least as I think they should be addressed) as the implication is that God is the author of all evil, making God and Satan in effect brothers under the skin.