Bleg for readings on divine attributes

Annie,
Let me recommend Eleonore Stump's excellent article "Dante's Hell, Aquinas's Moral Theory, and the Love of God," Canadian Journal of Philosophy (1986), 16: 181-196. Here, Stump discusses God's relationship to goodness, arguing that God doesn't just happen to be all-good, but that God is identical with goodness itself.

Another helpful reference is A Companion to Philosophy of Religion edited by Quinn and Taliaferro, which has entries on all three divine attributes you mention, including good bibliographical references. I think that this would be a good starting point for getting into the various issues here.

I think the concept of God you have in mind is Anselmian--i.e., where it's held a priori that God is the greatest possible being. A great place to look for contemporary elucidation of the Anselmian idea of God is Thomas V. Morris _The Logic of God Incarnate_ and also his _Anselmian Explorations_.

Matthew, thank you for posting this bleg. (Could I have possibly used the word 'interested' more frequently?)

Kevin and Mike, thank you for your suggestions. I will look into all of those.

Wrt the big three attributes, here's why I wonder about omnibenevolence: It's easier to see why God should be omnipotent and omniscient. Seems like he would have to possess these two attributes in order to do the things he's supposed to have done. But perfect goodness doesn't seem so obviously necessary; why could it not be the case that an omnipotent and omniscient yet not omnibenevolent God exists? I wonder if the arguments for omnipotence and omniscience are stronger than those for omnibenevolence. If they are different in strength - and nature, too - why is that?

Thank you for the current suggestions and thanks in advance for any further suggestions.

Another recommendation along the same general lines as those given by Mike, though with some different conclusions, is Katherine Rogers' Perfect Being Theology (sorry, I don't know how to link to the appropriate Amazon page in a comment).

Annie, can you say a bit more about why you think "It's easier to see why God should be omnipotent and omniscient" than why He should be omnibenevolent? If God is, following Anselm's formulation, "that which nothing great can be conceived," then why would't this be true for power, knowledge and goodness? Here's a quick thought experiment to get at my point (I think something like this is in Bill Rowe's most recent book). If, for example, both Jove and Thor are equal in terms of their power, knowledge, etc..., but Jove is morally better than Thor, isn't Jove a better being than is Thor?

Another related reason to think that an omnipotent, omniscient but not omnibenevolent being couldn't exist is the doctrine of divine simplicity, but perhaps you're not inclined to that doctrine.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding you--maybe you're thinking about particular arguments and not perfect being theology in general. If so, can you say what arguments in particular you think are of different strengths?

Annie,
The Anselmian answer is that a being that possesses essential omniscience, essential omnipotence and moral imperfection is less great than a being that possesses essential omniscience, essential omnipotence and essential moral perfection. That is, essential moral perfection is a *great-making* characteristic. Ok, so why is such a being greater, right? The very short medieval story is that these divine attributes are perfections or "positive properties" (as Leibniz later puts it in his ontological argument and Kurt Godel much later puts it in his version, and David Johnson later still puts it in his impressive version), and the more perfect a being, the more reality the being possesses. God has every positive property or every perfection (so say Anselmians) since God is ultimately real. But that is an extremely short answer to that tough question.

Hey Annie,

The ontological argument is good. However, if Christian revelation teaches about a God who is less-than the God of the ontological argument's conclusion you will have trouble justifying your reasons for believing the Christian God is omnibenevolent. To justify that the Christian God is omnibenevolent you will need to look at His work in history and what He has revealed.
1 John 1:4-6 (NASB), states
"4 These things we write, so that our joy
may be made complete.
5 This is the message we have heard from Him
and announce to you, that God is Light, and
in Him there is no darkness at all."
In the context of 1 John, "darkness" is directly connected to evil. I know this answer is not a philosophical response. However, there is good reason. The Christian God is in agreement with the God of the ontological argument's conclusion. If the ontological argument is insufficient evidence, maybe the source of Christian doctrine helps.

Is this a no brainer or helpful?

Hi Folks,

I'm heading out to work, so will have to get back to you tomorrow re: your questions. Thank you for your interest.

Annie

Why is it necessary for God to be anything, except, perhaps, self-existent? The other attributes are divine attributes not because they are necessary ontologically, but because they encapsulate what the Bible teaches.

Annie asked for justification for the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. (I don’t even like the term omnibenevolence. Divine benevolence is absolute and not relative. Something is good or not good. In the term omnibenevolence, the prefix “omni” seems redundant.)

Anselm’s concept of the perfect being doesn’t sound like a justification. Anselm simply defines God (and reality) in a certain way and describes God as possessing certain attributes in perfect form. But this is not a justification for God having these attributes, it is only one explanation based on Anselm’s criteria. In other words, Anselm’s definition of God includes these attributes. This is not a justification, it’s begging the question.

Why is it necessary for God to have these attributes? We can consider the cosmological arguments and conclude that there must be a first cause or a necessary being—so, as I said earlier, God must be self-existent (even this assumes certain things about the universe). But, aside from that, I think the other attributes are not necessary in the strict sense, but only possible—because they provide a coherent view of God as described in the Bible. It is equally possible for there to be a god who is not always good.

". . . Anselm simply defines God (and reality) in a certain way and describes God as possessing certain attributes in perfect form. But this is not a justification for God having these attributes, it is only one explanation based on Anselm’s criteria. In other words, Anselm’s definition of God includes these attributes. This is not a justification, it’s begging the question."

This is a bad misunderstanding. Anselm's argument for the traditional divine attributes has nothing to do with the semantic question of what is meant by 'God'. It would be good to be mindful that definitional questions are entirely distinct from metaphysical questions. It would be good to be mindful that Anselm's argument is better than almost any subsequent ontological argument: he does not make the mistakes of either Descartes or (even) Spinoza. But this is old news. Anselm does not beg the question since he argues that we know *a priori* that God possesses these attributes. His position is an epistemological one on the metaphysics of perfect beings. You might argue that this is not known a priori, but first I'd like to see the argument and second that is different from the badly mistaken claim that he begs any questions.

"Anselm does not beg the question since he argues that we know *a priori* that God possesses these attributes."

If the question is whether certain attributes are necessary. And Anselm assumes that we know a priori that God possesses certain attributes. How is this not begging the question?

The point I was trying to make (apparently, not very effectively) was that we cannot prove that certain divine attributes, such as benevolence, are necessary. We can only accept them based on our concept of God--from Scripture or, if you prefer, from an "argument" concerning what we know a priori.

In addition to Quinn and Taliaferro's A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, I'd also recommend Hoffman and Rosenkrantz's The Divine Attributes.

"And Anselm assumes that we know a priori that God possesses certain attributes. How is this not begging the question?"

The long established a priori approach to metaphysical questions is not ipso facto question begging. Much of metaphysics (e.g. analyses of causation, analyses of knowledge, etc.) has proceeded this way. There is an open question about the limits of a priori knowledge. Maybe the limits do not extend far beyond mathematics or logic; maybe not even that far. But we'd need an argument. In any case taking the a priori approach to metaphysical questions about the nature of God is not, by that very fact, question begging.
I agree that there is another tradition that prefers the a posteriori approach that you seem to be suggesting. But it's not obvious which approach is right.

Hi Folks,
Sorry it took so long to get back here.
Okay. I'd like to consider arguments independent of Biblical (or other religious) teaching. I should also say that I'm just following some inklings here. One inkling is that it makes sense that a universe's creator be omnipotent and omniscient. The world that exists, however, has that pesky problem of evil in it. Perhaps there's some way to argue that the universe was created by an omnipotent and omniscient, but not an omnibenevolent, being.
Another inkling is about how assessing power and knowledge seems less subjective than assessing goodness. All rely on human ideas of identifying and measuring these attributes. Identifying and measuring a human's power and knowledge seems more straightforward than assessing their goodness. I think humans can more readily agree on standards of power and knowledge than those on goodness. Perhaps we're similarly talented at assessng a creator-being's attributes.
Yet another, lesser inkling is around how much the omnibenevolent attribute fulfills a human need/desire.
So. I guess I'm wondering if there's some way that questions about...
- the possibility that a universe could be created by an omnipotent and omniscient, but not omnibenevolent, being; and
- the idea that we've somehow got it wrong when it comes to thinking about divine goodnss...
...might allow some room for arguing that our creator being is not perfectly good?
Apologies for typos...my keys are sticking. Thanks again for your input.