Thomas said:
Metaphysics, in its purest forms, states the following:
God is Absolute, in that nothing can be added, nothing taken away, there is no augmentation, no diminution.
God is Infinite in that there is no constraint, no boundary, no limitation.
From these two, everything else follows.
With regard to omniscience or omnipotence, God is 'outside' time and space, which are both limitations determined by finitude.
If God is not omniscienct or not omnipotent, then there is some form of limit or containment active on God which is itself more powerful than God, and thus must necessarily be God, so the argument is self-defeating.
No-one can know the Deity in its esse ('is-ness' - as it is to itself), but only indirectly through observation of nature, or directly as revealed through the great traditions.
Namaste Thomas,
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2606/meta_def.htm
Definition of Metaphysics (from the Webster's Unabridged)
"[The term was first used, is is believed, by Andronicus of Rhodes, the editor of Aristotle's works, as a name for that part of his writings which came after the Physics.] That division of philosophy which includes ontology, the science of being, and cosmology, or the science of the fundamental causes and processes in things; in a looser serse, all of the more abstruse philosophical diciplines, in a narrower sense, ontology alone."
"The primary meaning of metaphysics is derived from those discussions by Aristotle, which he himself called the Fifst Philosophy, or Theology, and which deal with the nature of being, with cause or genisis, and with the existence of God. Later metaphysics was understood as the science of the supersensible. By Albertus Magnus it was called the 'transphysical science', and Aquinas considered it to be concerned with the cognition of God."
"Scholastic philosophy in general understood it as the science of being in itself, that is, as 'ontology', a meaning which, with some difference of interpretation is still retained."
"The Rennaisance resulted in two developments. in Germany, Cristian Wolff divided metaphysics into ontology, psychology, cosmology, and natural or rational theology. In England Bacon defined it as the quest or study of formal and final causes, contrasting with it natural philosophy as treating efficient and material causes."
"As philosophy recieved from Descartes its peculiarly epistemological character, the conception of metaphysics altered from the science of being to the science of the conditions of knowledge. In England, owing to the prevalence of psychological problems, it became pratically identified with the analytical psychology of the time; while in Germany Kant's 'Critique' asserted its trancendental province as the science of pure, or apriori, reason."
"The notion that metaphysics is concerned with that which transcends experience led to the positivistic denial of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, while the critical spirit and logical point of view of Kant cuased metaphysics to be identified with the logic by Hegel. Schopenhauer and later writers have insisted that metaphysics is concerned with analysis of experience in the broad sense, and this empirical view is largely held by modern writers."
from the above we can see that metaphysics is not solely concerned with God, per se, rather with the supramundane aspects of knowledge. you are basing your definition of metaphysics on your presumed existence of God. however, metaphysics are also discussed and used by those with no theistic belief, therefore the meaning has to be more inclusive than that which has been offered.
moreover, there are things that God cannot do.. for instance, God cannot draw a square circle. Omnipotence means that God has the ability to do anything that is logical, Omniscience means that God has the ability to know anything that is logical. things that aren't logical are removed from the equation.
more directly, we even see it in the various scriptures that God cannot do anything... usually it's by His own decree. for instance, God cannot lie because He says that He won't..... though that could be a lie, in an of itself, that would be a different thread.
perhaps, and this is simply speculation for the sake of speculation, God could constrain Himself if He chose to... and from our observations of His creation, He has.
