The power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible, i.e. in harmony with His nature and attributes. The term comes from the Latin words omnia and potens, and means ‘able to do all things’. The omnipotence of God is a dogma of the Catholic Church, contained in all the creeds and defined by various councils. In the Old Testament there are more than seventy passages in which God is called Shaddai (שדי), i.e. Almighty. The Scriptures represent this attribute as infinite power, which God alone possesses. The Greek and Latin Fathers unanimously teach the doctrine of Divine omnipotence. Popular phrases sometimes expressed in theological debates about things intrinsically impossible, include contradictory matters, such as: ‘Could God make a square circle?’, or ‘Could God create a stone so big and heavy that He himself could not lift it?’