Can God Make a Rock So Big that Even God Cannot Lift It?

Article by Dan Kent

The moment you confess your belief in God, I have found, some clever fella will emerge from the crowd to stand before you and ask:

“Can God make a rock so big that even God cannot lift it?”

It’s a trap, of course. If you say: “YES, God can make such a rock,” clever-fella will accuse your God of being limited, since God has made a rock God cannot lift. If you say: “NO, God can make no such rock,” clever-fella will say your God is limited, since God cannot make the rock. Either way, according to clever-fella, God is limited. It seems a person who believes in God has no safe way to answer.

But we do have an answer. The answer is: No, God cannot make a rock so big that even God cannot lift it.

Are we exposing God as a limited, powerless fraud with this answer? I don’t think so. God cannot make such a rock, true, but not because of a limitation in God. Rather, the rock carries within itself all of the important limitations.

God cannot make a married bachelor, either. Bachelors, by definition, simply cannot be married while still remaining a bachelor. There can be no such bachelor. Rocks also contain limitations. Namely, a rock simply cannot be so big that God could not lift it. There can be no such rock. God’s inability to make such a rock reveals no limitation in God just as God’s inability to make a married bachelor reveals no limitation in God.

Hope this helps. Rock on!