Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Motivation-based virtue ethics
- Part II Divine Motivation theory
- 5 The virtues of God
- 6 The moral importance of the Incarnation
- 7 The paradoxes of perfect goodness
- 8 The problem of evil
- Conclusion to Part II
- Part III Ethical pluralism
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
7 - The paradoxes of perfect goodness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Motivation-based virtue ethics
- Part II Divine Motivation theory
- 5 The virtues of God
- 6 The moral importance of the Incarnation
- 7 The paradoxes of perfect goodness
- 8 The problem of evil
- Conclusion to Part II
- Part III Ethical pluralism
- Bibliography
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
How can you [God] be omnipotent if you cannot do all things? How can you do all things if you cannot be corrupted, or lie, or make false what is true – which would be to make what exists into non-being – and so forth? If this is so, how can you do all things? Or is it that these things proceed not from power, but from powerlessness?
Anselm, ProslogionTheological ethics and theological metaphysics intersect at the idea of perfect goodness. In Chapters 5 and 6, I developed the ethical implications of this idea in a new form of theological virtue theory. In this chapter and the next, I turn to the metaphysics of God and the puzzles generated by the concept of a perfectly good being. The difficulty is that perfect goodness appears to be inconsistent with three other divine attributes: omnipotence, freedom, and moral goodness. The apparent implication of the third problem is that the concept of perfect moral goodness is inconsistent. In addition to these puzzles, there is the problem that perfect goodness and omnipotence seem to be jointly inconsistent with the existence of evil. Divine Motivation theory gives us a way to escape these difficulties. I will argue that the problem of evil can be avoided in its standard forms, but that the problem of suffering is not a problem of evil; it is a puzzle about the motives of God. This problem requires a different approach than the problem of evil.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Divine Motivation Theory , pp. 271 - 303Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004