difficulty in establishing the compatibility of perfect goodness and omnipotence, because
a being whose nature is to be perfectly good is incapable of doing evil. But so long as
omnipotence is understood to require only that no other being could possibly be as
powerful, the fact that God, being necessarily good, cannot do evil will not imply that he
cannot be both perfectly good and omnipotent. The more significant difficulty in
establishing the possibility of a being having these three perfections in the highest
possible degree is that some aspects of God's goodness do not appear to possess a highest
possible degree. We've noted three aspects of God's goodness: moral goodness, nonmoral
goodness, and metaphysical goodness. What is unclear is whether nonmoral goodness,
specifically happiness, or metaphysical goodness, is such that there is a highest possible
degree of it that a being can possess. It does seem, however, that although beings differ in
their degrees of moral goodness, there is an upper limit to moral goodness such that it is
not possible to have a greater degree of moral goodness. Consider increasing degrees of
largeness in angles. An angle of 20 degrees is larger than an angle of 15 degrees, and so
on. On one standard account of what an angle is there are angles of ever increasing size
that approach the limit for an angle at 360 degrees. So the largest possible angle is an
angle of 360 degrees. If the degree of moral goodness that may be exhibited by conscious
beings has an upper limit, then God will be a morally perfect being having the highest
possible degree of moral goodness. But also consider the series of positive integers. As
opposed to our series of angles, the series of positive integers does not converge
end p.32
on a limit. To any positive integer we can always add 1 and produce a still larger integer.
Hence, while given our standard definition of an angle, there is such a thing as an angle
than which a larger is not possible, there is no such thing as a positive integer than which
a larger is not possible. And the question we face is whether the increasing degrees of
happiness or increasing degrees of metaphysical goodness converge on an upper limit, or
instead are such that no matter what degree of happiness or metaphysical goodness
something possesses it is always possible that it (or something else, perhaps) should
possess a still greater degree of happiness or metaphysical goodness. If the latter should
be the case, then the theistic God, as traditionally conceived, is not a possible being. But
it is fair to say that at the present time we lack demonstrative proof on either side of this
issue.
WORKS CITED
Adams, Robert M. 1972. “Must God Create the Best?” Philosophical Review 81: 317–32.
Aquinas. 1945. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton Pegis, vol. 1. New
York: Random House.
Aristotle. 1941. Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard
McKeon. New York: Random House.
Boethius. 1962. The Consolation of Philosophy, prose VI, tr. Richard Green. New York:
Bobbs-Merrill.