Daniel asked:

If logic requires that omnipotence is properly defined as power that has absolutely no limits (the
ultimate extent of power imaginable, including the power to make 2+2=5), then does logic require that
omnibenevolence is defined as benevolent toward absolutely everything no matter how good or bad?
This poses the problem of whether power, and even benevolence, is a real thing in itself, or is only
relative to other things. Is power and benevolence like the problem of the 'horseness' of a horse?
And, if benevolence is necessarily partly a subjective feeling inside yourself in regard to something of
which you approve, then would omnibenevolence include approving of logically (truthfully)
self-contradictory arguments against omnipotence?

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Several questions compete for attention here. One regards the status of attributes. Another, their
mutual compatibility. Yet another is about the status of essences ("the 'horseness' of a horse"). The
following is the best I can do given my imprecise grasp of Daniel's point.

Logic requires only that a definition be internally consistent. Apart from that, one may stipulate a word
to mean whatever one wishes. Logic cannot require one to stipulate that omnipotence means a power
that has absolutely no limits, including logical limits (as Daniel's example implies).

Commonly, the job of defining omnipotence and omnibenevolence (and omniscience) subserves the
goal of formulating a philosophy of God. The ideal of the mutual coherence of God's attributes in such
a philosophy will guide their definition. Doing this successfully requires more than stipulation. It
requires understanding how God functions in one's cosmology. Through a process of mutual
adjustment, the definition of each attribute emerges in the light of all the others. I see no reason to
accept (what strikes me as) caricatures of attributes so that they are seen as mutually incompatible.

What is the "problem" of the "horseness of a horse"? Perhaps it concerns whether we may affirm that
it exists just as we affirm that a horse exists. It seems to me that "horseness" is just an abstraction
from our understanding of what it means for something to be a horse. The status of such an
abstraction is one thing, and the status of attribute is quite another. An attribute is as real as the thing
of which it is an attribute. For example, Celine Dion's voice is as real as she is. It is not independently
real, but neither is it an abstraction. My concept of Celine Dion, however, is a horse of a different
color: "Celine-Dion-ness" is only an abstraction.

Anthony Flood