for Christianity, at any rate, hard omnipotence is clearly ruled out by the Crucifixion
Why?
To your question, I basically agree with Russell's argument that a truly omnipotent God can just skip means and go straight to ends. But there are multiple instances of Christ facing something unwanted--- the most memorable being the Crucifixion. If all-powerful, why go through with it? And if any good thing came of it, why not just omnipotence that thing into existence and skip the hard stuff?
Don't get me wrong, I believe in the divinity, and supremacy, of Christ, and I believe Christ when He said that "all things are possible to him that believeth". But hard omnipotence, transcending even logic, seems pretty conclusively ruled out to me.
I hope you don't kick yourself!
I have an answer for you. The tl;dr is that it’s not about the result, but read on.
So the outcome isn’t the reason. How do I know? Time isn’t a thing for God - he can skip to the end. God can have any state he desires, in an instant. Yet he is here through us.
But why? We’ll answer this from two sides, first: why not? You’re infinite and can have literally everything, everywhere, all at once, in fact, you don’t even know what sensations are, so what else are you going to do? Think about that for a moment. You’re infinite. You’re the king with untold riches.
Bearing that context in mind: why? The answer is the same. Because you’re a single infinite being. You can literally have everything, everywhere, all at once. God isn’t good or evil. He is good and evil. So as an infinite being, what don’t you have? Limitations, form (a limitation) and friends (someone that’s not you, because you’re it - the beginning and end). So this - _is_ the why. Why God did this. So that is to say that we’re all God, experiencing limitation, form and companionship. And to keep the illusion going, God has to hide the ultimate secret truth from himself: that he is infinite, that he has everything, everywhere, all at once.
But here we are trapped on a lonely planet with finite potential in a seemingly infinite box called space. Here, we are, experiencing _this_, feeling, sensing, solitude, companionship, separation, union, pain, joy. We experience who we are, because God has temporarily forgotten his infinity.
>Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
And there is further the question of our own suffering: if we're supposed to get some "good" out of it, why not just wave a wand and give us the good without the bad?
I conclude that God lives in a world with rules like you and me, though they are likely quite different.
But more seriously imo is the why. Why make yourself less powerful? And any answer to that faces the question: if you're so omnipotent, why not wave your hand and get that good thing without disempowering yourself?
The “why” question is a good one. I’m not well versed in theology, but I thought the general idea was that God’s goal was to create independant beings with agency and free will. And in order to accomplish that God (an omnipotent being) would by necessity have to limit their own power. Without doing so it would be logically impossible for other free beings to exist.