With God, All Things Are Possible

A reader asks:

In Sunday school today, the question was asked "Can God create a rock that he can not move?" It seems to challenge the idea that all things are possible with God. I think there is an answer if we look at it from God's will. My answer to the question is Yes God can create a rock he can not move if he wanted to. You might answer "then there is something he can not do". My answer is that "he does not want to". If he wanted to create a rock he can not move then he does not want to move it.

My response:

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to pose an analogous question: Can a cat fly? To answer that question, we must ask: what we mean by cat and fly. Once we do that, we have a probable answer.

What you are basically doing is posing what in Zen would be regarded as a koan-- a counter-rational question and answer. One koan was: "What is Buddha?" The answer: "Three pounds of flax." The most famous koan in Christianity in my view is: "What is God?" and the answer is: "The trinity."

Your question contains assumptions about the nature of God that inform your question but may not have much scriptual foundation, if the foundation to your view of God is Christian scripture.

For example:

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is a "he".
3. God not merely created but creates.
4. God is a physical force.
5. That the "things" as referenced in Mark 10:27 ("With God. all things are possible") refers to God's omnipotence.

(The context of the passage make no such implication. "Things" refers to the salvation of a rich man. Jesus in fact evokes another koan in verse 25 to make this point: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.")

It seems to me that you are looking at images to resolve paradoxes. These paradoxes cannot be resolved because they transcend definitions and logic.

If your view of God is source other than Christian scripture, then that source will provide you the answer.