Kathy asked:

In a philosophy class, the professor asked us to discuss whether the laws given to us by God (i.e. the
ten commandments) are good because He said they were good (implying good is arbitrary based on
God's choice), or did he give us these laws because they are good, implying that the idea of "good" is
independent of God. The argument was that God could just as easily have told us to hate our
neighbor, or to kill freely, and then these things would be good by definition (directed by God). My
question is this: since God is by definition omnipotent and omniscient, could neither of these choices
be correct, or both choices simultaneously? Perhaps in imperfect, human logic, doesn't omnipotence
contradict omniscience? Can a paradox exist for God?

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God him/herself is Paradox, and the paradox of God is that He/She understands him/her self to be
that which he/she is and can be nothing more or nothing less since lessening diminishes and
changes and God cannot change and the same with more. Thus, the paradox of God is that while
He/She is creator and sustainer of everything that exists at every level physically, conceptually and
ideally, he/she cannot be create that which is greater than He/She/ Anselm's famous 'Ontological
Proof for the Existence of God' i.e 'God is that of which nothing greater can be said to be' relies on the
assumption that Being is contingent upon God as the supreme being and that such being derives its
existence from God (it is what Duns Scotus would later call the doctrine of Univocity of Being').

The paradox of God limited to his own greatness and God-ness is precisely that: since God cannot be
anything less or greater than that which He/She is then he is limited to his/her own experience of
his/her own being as being in itself. Thus the ultimate paradox of God is the limitlessness of his
limitation since God is that of which nothing greater can be said to be, then He/She cannot be the
cause of his/her own non-existence which that which greater than God existing would be since there
would be something greater than that of which nothing greater can be said to be and thus He/She
would cease to exist. If God ceased to exist then that which was greater than God would be the
supreme being in the the universe, and thus would find itself in the same position.

Thus the paradox of God in Him/Herself is that his/her omnipotence, omniscience does not in fact
exist as a contingency in God but rather God as God is omnipotent, God as God is omniscient, God
as God in Being God is all these and none. The ultimate paradox is: God exists as God and cannot
exist as anything other than that.

Fr Seamus Mulholland OFM