ABSTRACT
As Quine (1961) might have said, the question about God’s omnipotence can be put in four very short words: ‘What can God do?’ The traditional answer is equally brief: Everything. But there remains room for disagreement over cases, and so the issue has stayed alive down the centuries. In practice, there have been many tacit restrictions on the belief that God can do everything. It was not - or at least not at first sight - supposed that God can go for a walk in the garden, or speak Hebrew, or sit upon a throne.’ It was commonly accepted that since God is incorporeal, he cannot be said to be capable of such bodily activities in anything other than a metaphorical sense. For the same reason, whether God can literally be said to have emotions has depended on different beliefs about whether emotions (or some emotions) necessarily involved physical states or not. The issues which have been controversial are those which seemed to be less peripheral, more closely linked to the belief that God is infinite, and that his creative powers are therefore likewise unrestricted. Could God create worlds other than the one he has created? Can God change the past? Are there any other kinds of limitation on what God can do? Can God do what is morally wrong?
