Can God do Anything?

Moshe Ben-Chaim

How would you answer someone who asks the question, “Can God do anything?” If we say yes, we arrive at great problems. For in truth, God cannot be unjust, He cannot destroy himself, He cannot make Himself physical, He cannot make my birthday a different day than it was, he cannot place something in two different locations simultaneously, and many other impossibilities. In other words, God being limited is a truth. Most people feel limitation in respect to God is an imperfection.

To correct the error, we must attribute “perfection” to God, under which all other attributes must fall. We do not start with the infantile notion that God can do anything, even impossibilities. This latter belief is the source of the error: it is carried over from youth and has gone unchecked. But realizing the problem, one must now ascribe limit to God, and this limit is a perfection. 

Imagine a judge who can never accuse wrongly, and in each and every one of his cases he proves the innocent as innocent, and finds the guilt in the guilty. Would we not attest to the greatness of such a judge, as he is flawless in his judgments? Would we not say that although he is limited to finding the truth in every case, and cannot err, that he is more perfect than a judge who does make mistakes? The same applies to God.

God cannot make Himself physical, nor kill Himself, nor judge falsely, nor punish the righteous, and we say in all these cases that this attests to His perfection. Limitations like these prove God’s perfection.