  Damian’s objective at the table of Monte Cassino was to protect the doctrine of divine omnipotence by advising that we should abstain from saying anything which implies that God is powerless in some respect. Some of the monks sitting at the table were less interested in Damian’s advice and more interested in the issue of omnipotence in itself. They were bold enough to put a question to Damian: if God is omnipotent in all things, as Damian has asserted, does he have the power of bringing it about that what has been done has not been done (601C)? We can be sure that Damian found this question very annoying. It is a difficult question, and it is a question that is difficult to handle without making statements about what God cannot do. Damian does not offer us any report about how the discussion continued. However, there is a remark in De divina omnipotentia which suggests that Damian himself was accused of implying that God is impotent in a certain respect (620D).