Can God do anything?
Universal declarations of divine ability coexist with stated impossibilities and narratives of constrained action.
- Textual conflict
- Interpretive tension
- The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
- Importance
- Foundational
- A central claim about origins, salvation, divine justice, or religious authority.
Unqualified ability to do anything meets an explicit inability to lie, though moral impossibility and lack of power need not mean the same thing.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Nothing is impossible or too hard for God
Is any thing too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Is the Lord’s hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.
Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? or fill the appetite of the young lions,
Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
Moreover the Lord answered Job, and said,
Then Job answered the Lord, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee:
Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
Divine action encounters limitations and God cannot lie
And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:
Understanding the contradiction
Luke 1:37 says nothing is impossible with God, and Job 42:1-2 credits him with doing everything. Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:18 nevertheless say God cannot lie. Taken without qualification, an ability to do everything and an inability to perform even one named action conflict. The distinction between a moral impossibility and a limit of power is not supplied by the universal wording itself.
The narrative examples are less direct. Judges 1:19 says the Lord was with Judah, but the subject who could not drive out the valley inhabitants is grammatically tied to Judah's campaign. It therefore shows unsuccessful divinely supported warfare without clearly stating that God personally lacked the power. Mark 6:4-6 says Jesus could do no mighty work there except a few healings and connects the setting with unbelief. Those qualifications matter. The clearest logical tension remains the universal possibility claims beside explicit divine impossibility, while the stories depict more limited practical outcomes.