Can God Defy Laws of Logic?

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:02]Unmute.

[00:00:10]Yo.

[00:00:12]Yo, can you hear me? Uh-huh.

[00:00:15]Uh hello. Yeah, I just wanted to ask you a quick question.

[00:00:19]So, uh I heard a lot of times about this uh this saying about if God can break the laws of logic. I need to understand that.

[00:00:31]And I don't know if that can be a contradiction itself as an argument. I don't think it's an argument itself. So, I just wanted to ask about it.

[00:00:38]Well, I think the laws of logic are features that uh describe the created order. So, logic is something that pertains to the created order, kind of like math. So, they're reflections of principles in the divine mind. They're not things that determine God's essence or nature. So, we don't sit there and say God is uh you know, subservient to or under the laws of logic. Rather, it's the other way around that God exists, that becomes the grounding for the laws of logic. So, a lot of people want to put the cart before the horse, and they put the thing that uh is grounded in God before God and make God submit to that.

[00:01:16]That's what you see in a lot of Roman Catholic argumentation about the divine simplicity or the energies or any of that kind of stuff. So, we just uh we have it's the other way around.

[00:01:26]Mhm. So, just like you would as um uh basically a part of the nature of God or something like that or am I wrong?

[00:01:34]>> No, it's a reflection. Uh so, logic is a a feature of the created order that is based on the uncreated logi in the mind of God. So, there's a logi for every principle of logic or number or whatever that exists in the mind of God, but they're not identical. The logi are uncreated, but logic and these kinds of things are are creatures and they're they're created. That's why Maximus says that universals can perish.

[00:02:00]That's not the Platonic position. Plato says universals are the monad. They are the one. So, it's a different it's a non-Platonic position.

[00:02:09]So, it's an impossibility. It doesn't actually um So, itself asking that is just self-contradicting itself, right? Well, yeah, it's kind of a nonsense question.

[00:02:20]Like, for example, uh if you know what Aristotelians argue or Roman Catholics and Thomists argue, if you think about the logic uh the LPT, the logical problem of the Trinity, um when Muslims and Jake and people like that use the LPT, they're trying to take a principle of analytic philosophy or logic or predication and then say that the Christian view violates logic and therefore it's not true. But, it's not understanding that you can't smash God into uh one type of naming or one type of descriptor or one type of modern analytical philosophy because that's not the type of being that God is.

[00:03:05]So, itself he will have a like another divine level that we cannot comprehend and we're trying to bound uh >> [clears throat] >> uh the the well the sort of way we interpret >> Logic and math are like one of the divine rays that comes from the divine mind to us. God has many other things about him, right? That they don't exhaust him and they don't define him.

[00:03:31]It's sort of like if if you saw me over here working out math problems, would you think that math problems are my essence? No, they would be something that is sort of coming out of me or coming from me, proceeding from me. So, in the same way, God shows us things about himself through principles of math and geometry and order and all that. We learn about the harmony of the divine mind and the beauty of the divine mind and order and all that, but they don't exhaust him or define him.

[00:04:00]Mhm. Okay, so If you read Dionysius, this is the way he speaks of the the things that come from God, the rays, the emanations.

[00:04:08]The processions, I should say, not emanations.

[00:04:11]Okay, from what I'm getting uh from all of this is that the question itself is wrong just to ask it.

[00:04:17]Uh is that what you're trying to say?

[00:04:21]Yeah, I mean, you could argue that the question is premised on uh the idea that uh God is somehow definable or exhaustible by created principles. Yeah, since he said divine being he cannot be defined by limited minds and he's unlimited, so he's not bound by by logic itself. He is >> Right. It would It would be violating the apophatic theology of Orthodoxy, right? So, apophatic theology holds that God in himself and his essence is unapproachable, unknowable, undefinable, inexhaustible. It's the via negativa.

[00:04:53]But, the way that we know him is by the energies that come down to us as Basil says in 234.

[00:04:59]Mhm. Okay, so I mean, could he manipulate himself? I mean, he's an all-powerful being and All right, we're going to move on. No, he doesn't manipulate himself because he is a being with free will and a nature that that defines who he is and how he acts.

[00:05:15]So, God can't change his nature because that would be ultimately going against who he himself is.

[00:05:22]So, for example, when Paul says it's impossible for God to lie, Paul says that because God's nature and character is holy, he can't do evil or bad things.

[00:05:31]And so, what we consider possible or impossible is going to be determined by our worldview. So, a lot of times low-tier atheists will say, "Well, to be omni- omnipotent means you can literally do anything. And if you can't make yourself not exist, then you're not omnipotent." Well, that's not what omnipotent means in the Christian paradigm. And all of these words and terms are going to be determined by the paradigm from which they're situated.

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