West, chiefly through the writings of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius. Two related ideas
make up metaphysical goodness. The first is that whatever has being is good. This idea
lies behind the medieval theme that evil is simply a privation of being, an absence of
good. So, nothing that exists can be fully evil, for insofar as something exists it has some
degree of goodness. The second idea contained in the notion of metaphysical goodness is
that the value of the created universe increases in proportion to the variety of kinds of
beings God creates. For the purpose of the created world is to reflect the infinite goodness
of God. And this is best reflected by God's creating a variety of kinds of creatures, rather
than only one kind of creature.
The main problem connected with the classical view that God is necessarily perfectly
good is the problem of determining to what extent it makes sense to praise or thank God
for his good acts. As we've seen, it is very important to the theistic view of God that he
deserves our unconditional gratitude and praise for his good acts. But if God's being
essentially perfectly good makes it necessary for him to do what he sees as the best thing
to be done, then it is difficult to make any sense of thanking him or praising him for
doing what is best for him to do. It seems that he would not be deserving of our gratitude
and praise for the simple reason that he would act of necessity and not freely. After all,
being perfect, he couldn't fail to do what he sees as the best thing to be done. Of course, if
God had acquired his perfections by his own free will, developing himself to be wise,
powerful, and morally perfect, then we could in some derivative sense thank him for
doing what he sees to be best and wisest on the whole. For he would be responsible for
possessing the perfections that now make it necessary for him to do what he sees to be
the best for him to do. But because God's absolute perfections are part of his nature, and
not acquired by him over time as a result of his own efforts, it would appear that he is not
responsible even in a derivative sense for doing what he sees to be best and wisest on the
whole. In short, so the objection goes, when God does what he sees to be the best and
wisest course of action he acts of necessity and not freely. That being so, it makes no
sense to praise God for doing what he sees to be the best and wisest course of action.
One way of trying to make sense of praising and thanking God for doing
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what he sees to be the best and wisest course of action is to note that in human affairs we
distinguish between acts that constitute one's moral duty and acts that are good to do but
are not morally required, acts that are superogatory, beyond the call of duty. Sometimes
the best act one can perform is an act that is beyond what duty demands. Such an act—
giving all one has to help others in need, for example—is superogatory, beyond what
one's moral duty requires, and failing to do it is not a failure to do what morality requires
of you, whereas giving none of what one has to help others in need may well be a failure
to fulfill one's moral duty to help those in need. If this distinction applies to God, we
might see God's nature as necessitating his doing what duty demands, but not requiring
him to do those acts beyond the call of duty. In which case, we can indeed praise God and
thank God for his gracious acts that are beyond what moral duty requires. But we should
note that a number of religious thinkers have held that this distinction does not apply to
an omnipotent, essentially perfect being. As the eighteenth-century British theologian
Samuel Clarke insisted, “Though God is a most perfectly free agent, he cannot but do