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Knox Ridley
Kenny Smith
Philosophy 3230
August 4, 2002
Thesis
God is Perfect, Therefore Flawed
Through out the history of philosophical explanations of God, whether it is a
panentheistic, pantheistic, or a theistic God, the value of perfection has always been of
utmost importance. In keeping with the theistic tradition, God is the highest state of
being, and it is reasonable to assume that the state in which this ultimate being exists is
perfect, therefore God is and exists in perfection. In this understanding, philosophers
claim that the very essence of God is prefect. It is the goal of this paper to explore the
meaning of the word “perfect” in relation to a theistic God, and pose some logical
problems in relation to the semantics of this meaning.
In light of the omnipredicates of the theistic tradition, God is considered
supremely perfect, and though this is what is said and believed, I intend to show how this
statement is not as easily understood in relation to some basic theistic claims about God’s
nature. This paper will draw logic from St. Anslem’s essay, the Ontological Essay, and
apply it to our dualistic understanding of God’s nature to show that the nature of God, in
our relative understanding, is dependant on it’s opposing force, and prove that though
God’s nature may be understood and experienced by relative understandings, for God to
retain perfection, “he” must transcend dualistic definitions.
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St. Anslem’s intentions were to logically prove that God existed. This paper is
not concerned with proving God’s existence; but in assuming that this omnipredicated
being exists, how it relates to the claim of being the perfect being. Before we discuss the
meaning of perfection, we will look at the logic of St. Anslem’s Ontological Essay to lay
down a foundation for this paper.
St. Anslem claimed that God is that which no higher conception could be
conceived. If you are to conceive of a higher conception, then the initial conception was
not God. He then went on to claim that it is greater to exist in reality than to exist in only
understanding, therefore God must exist.
Anslem is assuming that existence is greater than non-existence. It is a reasonable
assumption, but not one that can be completely understood due to any existing being’s
ignorance of the experience of not existing. For, to experience not existing is a
contradiction in and of it self, due to the fact that not existing warrants no experience at
all. So, we assume that it is greater to have the characteristic in which we are most
familiar with. This is also true in the experience of life and death. Most people assume
that life is greater than death, but this cannot be known for sure, due to the fact that no
one has experienced death and explained it in relation of life. Due to our ignorance of
death, it is impossible to directly claim that it is greater than life, the only way death
could conceivably be greater than life is if existence occurred in death to create a new
experience, therefore making death impossible. It is that which we are most familiar, and
comfortable with, in our subjective experiences, that earns our judgment of greatness
making that which we define as perfection to be the accumulation of subjectively
preffered extremes on a relative scale.
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Proving value judgements of greatness is not the issue here, but how dualistic
terms work together so that we may experience and define our experience of value
judging is. Within our relative world of understanding we define perfection in relation to
what it is not. We attribute God with being good because we cannot conceive of “him” to
be bad through what we know bad to be. It is through the direct or indirect experience of
what each of us considers to be bad, that we fully understand what it is like to be good.
This is how our dualistic or relative understanding works: we know what the feeling of
hot is in relation to being cold, we know what tall is in relation to that which is small.
That which is, only is in relation to that which it is not.
Each understanding is dependent on its adversary, or opposing force. Through
this system of understanding the world, we attribute God “his” characteristics. Through
the experience of evil, we conclude that God is all-good. Through the experience of
weakness, we attribute God as being all-powerful. Through the experience of ignorance,
we attribute God as being all-knowing. And through the continuous experience of all the
attributes God is not in our imperfect world, we see God as the “perfect” being. This is
what I will call relative perfection, and it is not based in what is actually greater, but what
is preferred.
Because of the value judgements it is based in, relative perfection is spurious in
nature. This reason is because it is impossible to claim what is greater, due to the fact
that value judgements are based in subjectivity, and are dependent on being what they are
in relation to what they are not. Imagine a world that was all good. In this world
goodness would not exist because we would not know what it is like to not experience
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goodness all the time. Experiencing good is dependent on understanding, and
experiencing directly, or indirectly that which is bad.
Through this understanding it is impossible to claim that good is greater than bad,
because they are both equally as important in understanding which we prefer to
experience. I can claim through my own personal experience what I prefer: good over
bad, life over death, knowledge over ignorance, etc., but to claim that knowledge is
greater than ignorance is an impossible claim to defend. I could give some reasonable
examples why I believe one value judgement to be greater, and even show the amazing
benefits of one over the other, but the fact is that I know what I prefer in relation to it’s
opposing force, or forces. It is because of what I do not like, that I am able to experience
what I do like. In realizing this, I can appreciate and understand who I am through
celebrating what I am not. If it were not for the bad, if everything was good, then
goodness would not exist, because we would have no relative understanding of what
good is in relation to what it is not.
It is reasonable to say that God as arelativly perfect being, like me, is everything
that “he” is not, therefore depends on what “he” is not to be what “he” is. What God is in
relation to what “he” is not is relative perfection. It is through relative perfection that we
may understand, and experience God’s nature in the relative world of existence. Without
the relative claims which oppose that which is relative perfection, relative perefection
would not exist.
Anslem claimed that God is the highest conception that could be conceived, in
keeping with this logic, this ultimate conception could only exist in an ultimate
environment that one could call perfection. This means, that this ultimate state could not
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be defined in relation to what it is not because each dualistic interpretation is understood
and categorized in a hierarchical system of understanding. In other words, this state must
transcend language.
In basic human understanding, dualistic terms work together to explain greater
meanings. I am using the word “greater” as a value judgment here only because the
“greater meanings” are the cause of the meanings below it; “greater in this sense is
synonymous with a more broud interpretation. For example, we know what a male is in
relation to a female, and these two understandings working together and are a function of
what we know to be human beings, or animals. We know what human beings are in
relation to animals, and these two work together to create what we know to be reason. It
is reason that separates humans from animals, and we know what reason is in relation to
instincts, and these two work together to create what we consider to be love and fear. We
understand love from fear, and these two emotions work together to create our experience
of life. We understand life in relation to death, and how all of these experiences work
together is what I will call ultimate perfection.
Ultimate perfection is void of value judgments. Each dualistic term works
together with it’s opposing force, or forces, to create a greater meaning of understanding.
Therefore if something has a dualistic relation it cannot be the ultimate experience, or
greatest experience. There will always be a higher field in which dualistic or relative
terms define themselves.
Ultimate perfection is, in this sense, the matrix in which all dualistic experiences
exist. Perfection that acts like a matrix for us to drastically define what we see as perfect
in relation to what we think is not perfect, is what ultimate perfection is. Since relative
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perfection is a function of ultimate perfection, it is reasonable to assume that ultimate
perfection is greater than relative perfection. Therefore, God must exist in ultimate
perfection, but rely on relative perfection in order to experience “himself” as God.
If this notion of Perfection is true, then it is reasonable to think that God must
exist in both ideas of perfection. The true essence of God, like ultimate perfection,
transcends, dualistic and relative understandings. But, in the relative world, if this
essence was all that exited, if it had nothing other than itself, it would not be able to
experience itself as it is. It is through our subjective experiences that we create relative
perfection in relation to what it is not, in order to experience the relative essence of God.
This would mean in a theistic sense that God is all good, all-powerful, and all
knowing, but only because of the experiences of badness, weakness, and ignorance. But,
it would also mean that there is another aspect of God that transcends relative definitions
of character. This aspect can best be defined by language in ultimate perfection by
simply saying, “God is.” In relative perfection, our relative understanding of what
perfection is, God is all knowing, all-powerful, and all good.
To help prove the idea of God not being limited to relative definitions, and being
beyond dualistic understandings, I will pose a question and then try to explain it. Would
God remain perfect if one of the omnipredicates attributed to God no longer existed?
Most theistic philosophers claim that God is the omnipredicates, and to remove one of
them would be to abolish theism all together. So, in the theistic tradition, if God were not
all of the omnipredicates, then God would no longer be perfect, in a relative sense,
because he would be missing a piece of “him” that originally made “him” perfect.
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Assume for argument, that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe.
Imagine that a meteor suddenly, and with out warning, collided with earth and wiped out
the human population. With out human interaction, and our experiences with each other,
would God still be all-powerful, all knowing, and all good?
God could still experience himself as all-powerful without intelligent life, through
the creation of physical space, and the ability to intervene when ever desired. God could
also experience himself as all knowing, maybe not to such a detailed extent with knowing
what all humans thoughts, emotions and actions are at once, but God could still know
what meteors would collide with what planets, or when a star will collapse. So, basically,
God’s knowledge would be limited to unintelligent physical interactions. But, I do not
believe God could retain the claim of being all-good without intelligent interaction.
Without our experience of goodness, love, wisdom, compassion, all of these godlike
attributes would be no more. How could a comet show its love? How could a black hole
exhibit mercy? Unintelligent matter cannot use reason to express God’s nature of
goodness.
If God only exists and is understood in relative perfection, or through subjective
experience, then through the annihilation of intelligent life, God would lose a piece of his
character. If goodness no longer existed, then God would have no way of defining
himself as good, therefor making himself no longer good.
God would still remain all-powerful, and following from this characteristic, be
able to recreate intelligent life in order to retain the essence of experiencing himself as
all-good in relative perfection. This may be true, but God would have to know what
goodness is in order to recreate the experience, and if goodness no longer exists in reality,
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there would have to be some remaining, fundamental knowledge of goodness beyond our
relative understanding in order for God to know that goodness is what he wants to
recreate.
With the understanding of ultimate perfection, God could still retain his essence
in ultimate perfection, but be unwilling to experience it in relative perfection. Therefore,
allowing God the knowledge of a quality without fully relying on the direct experience in
order to be God.
In conclusion, we understand God through knowing what he is not. How dualistic
forces, value judgments, work together to allow us the experience of our subjective
preferences is ultimate perfection. The sum total of all of our relative preferences is how
we define relative perfection, and because relative perfection is dependant on what it is
not, it cannot be the highest state of being. Though the nature of God can be experienced
in relative perfection, there must be an element of God that transcends dualistic
definitions and simply is.
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