On privileging God's moral goodness

Abstract

Prima facie, there is an incompatibility between God's alleged omnipotence and impeccability. I argue that this incompatibility is more than prima facie. Attempts to avoid this appearance of incompatibility by allowing that there are commonplace states of affairs that an omnipotent being cannot bring about are unsuccessful. Instead, we should accept that God is not omnipotent. This is acceptable since it is a mistake to hold that omnipotence is a perfection. God's moral perfection should be privileged over God's potency properties-and the same is true of human beings as well.