Wesley hears “with God all things are possible” as the gospel’s last word over human impossibility—not a theory that God can do the absurd. Arminius is just as careful: omnipotence is infinite, and nothing resists it; yet God cannot lie, sin, or un-God himself. Power is measured by the holy will, not by a schoolboy puzzle about rocks too heavy to lift.
Genesis 1 and Genesis 18 are of a piece with Matthew 19: the God who speaks light and who gives Sarah a son is the God who can save. Daniel’s furnace and Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling are not rival attributes; they are the same hand. Arminians refuse to let that hand become the author of sin. God can rule a world in which preventing grace makes faith possible and refusal still blameworthy.
Pastoral Arminian notes keep two refusals: a God too small to create or convert, and a power so bare that it makes evangelistic pleas play-acting. The Almighty is not less almighty because he has chosen not to coerce every yes.
Calvin does not let omnipotence sit idle. God is called almighty because he actually governs, not because he could act and does not. Westminster places “almighty” among the perfections of the one God and ties it at once to wise, righteous counsel. Hodge’s sentence is almost childlike: he wills, and it is done.
On this reading, creating, raising the dead, and keeping the church are one power. Ephesians 1’s “exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe” is the same might that seated Christ above every name. Reformed writers typically refuse a gap between what God can do and what he has purposed to do in providence—while still saying, with Westminster, that God is not the author of sin.
Pastoral Reformed notes use omnipotence for sleep: the furnace, the grave, and the hard heart are not finally stronger than God. They also warn against curiosity that asks God to do what would un-God him. The fork with Arminians is not whether God is able, but whether that ability includes an effectual determination of who will believe.
Key contrast Both confess that God can do all that is consistent with his nature. Arminians typically refuse to let that power author sin or make saving grace irresistible; the Reformed typically unfold omnipotence as actual, particular government—including who is effectually drawn—without meaning that God does evil.