This is a first draft of the third chapter in my book, Perfect Existence, with Alex Pruss. I’m sharing here for members interested in the edge of these developments. Your comments also contribute to our work.
Disclaimer: this draft includes my latest and best thinking about perfection in response to various problems. My co-author Alexander Pruss has yet to review this chapter. All mistakes and imperfections are mine.
“Perfection is just the amount of essence”
— Leibniz
In this chapter, we clarify the concept of perfect existence. We begin with a minimal theory. We then consider three increasingly substantive additions. This progression will help us distinguish what is essential to the perfection hypothesis from what belongs to stronger interpretations of it.
Clarifying the concept of perfection is important for several reasons. First, the concept of perfect existence bears directly on the puzzle that animates this book—the puzzle of fundamental existence. We are seeking to understand how reality could have an ultimate foundation. What could be fundamental? What could exist without deriving either its existence or its fundamental character from something deeper?
The central difficulty is to understand what could exist without a deeper explanation. Existence seems to call for an explanation. Yet it is not obvious what kind of reality, if any, could exist apart from any deeper explanation. This is where the concept of perfection becomes relevant.
The perfection hypothesis offers one way to address this difficulty. We consider the hypothesis that the nature of foundational reality involves a kind of perfection. Insight into this perfection may illuminate how foundational reality can be fundamental. The general idea is that a perfect nature would set foundational reality apart from the kinds of things that depend on a more fundamental explanation. This general idea invites precision. The task of this chapter is therefore to clarify what this perfection might involve. In doing so, we aim to illuminate the perfection hypothesis and its implications.
A second reason to clarify the concept of perfection is to advance our understanding of perfect being theology. Perfect being theology seeks to understand the implications of “perfect being” theism by reasoning from the concept of perfection. Understanding the implications of perfection is useful for assessing arguments against the existence of God. For example, one might argue that, if a perfect being exists, then the world should be different in certain respects. The concept of perfection is also useful for distinguishing and assessing competing conceptions of God. It can help us interpret purported revelations. It can also guide inquiry into divine knowledge, power, freedom, and goodness.
These applications of perfect being theology depend on a prior understanding of perfection. Yet there are debates about how perfection should be understood. What does it mean for a reality to be perfect? What makes an attribute a perfection? Are there different kinds or degrees of perfection? By clarifying the concept of perfection, we also clarify the meaning and utility of perfect being theology. We also gain a clearer view of its implications.
Finally, clarifying the concept of perfection helps us assess arguments against the coherence of theism. These arguments challenge many concepts of God. But it remains open whether they challenge every interpretation of the root concept of a perfect being.
To clarify the concept of perfection, we will first draw out a puzzle about the general concept. We will then address the puzzle in stages. We will consider four theories of perfection: (i) the minimal theory, (ii) the middle theory, (iii) the maximal theory, and (iv) the modal theory. Each has its advantages and trade-offs. We will explore each in turn.
The general concept of perfect existence faces a puzzle about coherence. A perfect reality is supposed to be free from deficiency. Yet substantive accounts of perfection may seem to generate impossible attributes or incompatible combinations of attributes. If they do, then the concept of perfection may contain the seeds of its own undoing.
Many objections to a perfect being have the following structure:
If a perfect being existed, it would possess some attribute, such as infinite power.
That attribute is impossible or incoherent.
Therefore, a perfect being is impossible.
This argument targets a single attribute derived from perfection. For example, someone might reason that a perfect being would possess unlimited power. Someone might then argue that unlimited power is incoherent because no being could perform a logically impossible action. Alternatively, one might formulate a task that appears to defeat any proposed account of omnipotence. If omnipotence is impossible, and if perfection entails omnipotence, then perfect existence is impossible.
Similar arguments target other attributes. Someone might argue that perfection entails complete knowledge, absolute simplicity, perfect freedom, or necessary existence. The question is then whether the relevant attribute can be understood coherently. Discussions of the divine attributes contain many arguments of this general form. Oppy, for example, examines a wide range of attributes associated with gods, including perfection, infinity, simplicity, necessity, fundamentality, omnipotence, omniscience, freedom, and perfect goodness (Oppy 2014). His discussion illustrates how difficult it can be to formulate a sufficiently rich account of the divine attributes without generating new problems.
Arguments of this kind raise two connected questions. First, what does perfection imply? Second, are the resulting attributes possible? These questions cannot always be answered independently. A theory may avoid one problem by revising its account of omnipotence, simplicity, freedom, or some other attribute. Yet the revision may raise a new question. Does the resulting attribute still express the fullness of perfection, or has it been weakened merely to preserve coherence? The challenge is not only to avoid contradiction. It is to avoid contradiction while retaining a recognizably perfect reality.
A second kind of objection targets a combination of attributes. It has the following structure:
If a perfect being existed, it would possess attributes A and B.
A is incompatible with B.
Therefore, a perfect being is impossible.
This argument does not claim that either attribute is incoherent by itself. The problem concerns their combination. Each attribute may be possible in isolation, while no single being could possess both. In that case, the attributes would form an inconsistent package.
Consider the apparent conflict between perfect power and perfect goodness. Suppose that perfect existence entails both maximal power and necessary moral perfection. A necessarily morally perfect being cannot choose to act wrongly. Yet a maximally powerful being may seem to have the power to perform any intrinsically possible action, including actions that would be morally wrong. This generates a dilemma. If the being cannot perform a morally bad action, then there appears to be something it lacks the power to do. But if it can perform such an action, then its moral perfection may not be essential to its nature.
Wes Morriston develops a sophisticated version of this challenge. A necessarily morally perfect being cannot actualize certain morally terrible states of affairs. Yet we can apparently conceive of another being with all the same nonmoral powers and, in addition, the power to actualize those states of affairs. The second being would seem to possess a wider range of power. Morriston therefore argues that necessary moral perfection appears to prevent a being from possessing the maximum conceivable degree of power (Morriston 2001, 143–160).
This case brings the puzzle into sharper focus. The apparent problem does not arise from either power or goodness alone. It arises from their interaction. An account of perfect power cannot be developed independently of an account of perfect goodness. Yet neither account can be revised freely. A theory that limits divine power may preserve goodness at the cost of maximality. A theory that expands divine power may preserve maximality at the cost of necessary goodness.
The same pattern appears elsewhere. Perfect knowledge may raise questions about freedom. Necessary existence may raise questions about freedom in creation. Simplicity may appear to conflict with knowledge of diverse truths or with distinct acts of will. Immutability may seem difficult to reconcile with responsiveness or personal relationship. In each case, the attributes may seem attractive when considered separately. The difficulty is to understand how they could belong together within one unified nature.
These examples reveal different depths of challenge. Some arguments call into question a particular definition of an attribute. Others suggest that two familiar definitions cannot be combined. Still others raise the more unsettling possibility that every sufficiently strong account will encounter some inconsistency. The first kind of problem may be solved through clarification. The second may require a more substantial revision. The third would threaten the underlying idea that perfection can be instantiated at all.
The depth of the problem depends in part on the theory of perfection under consideration. A highly substantive theory may entail omnipotence, omniscience, necessary moral perfection, simplicity, freedom, and many other attributes. Such a theory offers a rich conception of perfect existence. It also creates more opportunities for conflict. A more minimal theory may avoid some of these difficulties. Yet it faces a different concern. If too little follows from perfection, then the concept may cease to illuminate the nature of foundational reality.
The coherence puzzle therefore presses from two directions. A theory of perfection must be strong enough to capture what is distinctive about perfect existence. At the same time, it must be restrained enough to avoid impossible attributes or incompatible combinations of attributes. Strengthening the theory may increase its explanatory power while also increasing the danger of incoherence. Weakening the theory may preserve coherence while diminishing its content.
How, then, should perfection be understood? Does perfection require only the absence of deficiency? Does it require the possession of every great-making attribute? Does it require the maximum possible degree of each such attribute? Must these attributes belong to a perfect being essentially or necessarily? And can all of these features belong together within one nature?
These questions give the coherence puzzle its force. It is not yet clear whether the concept of perfect existence can be made both rich and coherent. The theories that follow offer different ways of meeting this challenge.
We begin with the most cautious account. On the minimal theory, perfect existence is simply existence without imperfection. Here imperfection is used in a precise metaphysical sense: it is a property that fixes a particular finite limit within a range of possible limits. The minimal theory therefore holds that foundational reality contains no such limiting features in its fundamental nature.
This proposal addresses the puzzle of fundamental existence by removing elements that seem to demand further explanation. A finite limit naturally invites a contrastive question: why this limit rather than a greater or lesser one? Suppose, for instance, that foundational reality essentially had the shape of a turtle. It would then have a determinate size, contour, and arrangement of parts—features that mark boundaries in its nature. Yet it could apparently have been larger or smaller, or differently shaped. Its specific configuration would therefore call for explanation.
The same difficulty arises with quantitative and parametric features more generally. If foundational reality were essentially one meter wide, composed of exactly seventeen parts, or endowed with some precise finite degree of power, we could still ask why it stops there. Why that degree rather than more or less? Why that number rather than another?
These questions become especially pressing when directed at what is supposed to be ultimate. A nonfundamental limit may be explained by appeal to something deeper—a cause, law, structure, or underlying nature. A fundamental limit cannot be explained in this way. If it is built into foundational reality itself, there is nothing more basic to account for why it falls where it does. It thus appears as an unexplained stopping point.
The minimal theory avoids this difficulty by denying that foundational reality includes any such essential limits. Its fundamental nature contains no arbitrary finite boundary or constraint. This claim is deliberately modest. It does not entail that foundational reality possesses every excellence, or that it has infinite degrees of all gradable features. It does not even assume that all of its features are measurable along a scale. It asserts only that foundational reality is not delimited in ways that generate unexplained arbitrariness.
This restraint also gives the minimal theory an advantage with respect to coherence. It does not begin by attributing a rich set of substantive properties to perfection. It does not yet imply omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, simplicity, or perfect freedom. As a result, it avoids many familiar tensions among these attributes—for example, the apparent conflict between necessary goodness and the power to do evil. Since the theory does not yet ascribe such features, it incurs none of their associated difficulties.
In this way, the minimal theory highlights a key contrast between a perfect foundation and ordinary finite realities. Ordinary things may have determinate sizes, shapes, quantities, or structures because something deeper explains those features. Foundational reality, by contrast, cannot be explained in that manner. By excluding arbitrary finite limits from its nature, the minimal theory sketches a way in which explanation might come to an end without terminating at an unexplained boundary.
At the same time, the theory leaves open many avenues for further development. One might extend it by adding accounts of power, knowledge, goodness, simplicity, or modality. Such additions, however, go beyond the minimal theory itself. Any coherence problems they introduce would belong to these stronger theories, not to the minimal core.
This restraint comes at a cost. The minimal theory tells us more about what foundational reality is not than about what it is. It rules out certain kinds of limitation, but it does not determine whether foundational reality is powerful, conscious, good, personal, simple, or unique. Nor does it specify what effects such a foundation would produce. Many different kinds of reality could satisfy its conditions.
The minimal theory thus achieves coherence by limiting its commitments. Fewer commitments mean fewer opportunities for contradiction. Yet a theory that says less also explains less. The central challenge, then, is whether we can enrich the concept of perfection—adding substantive content—without reintroducing the coherence problems that the minimal theory so carefully avoids.
The positive theory takes a further step. While the minimal theory tells us that foundational reality contains no arbitrary finite limits in its fundamental nature, the positive theory adds that foundational reality possesses at least one positive feature without fundamental limit or constraint. Perfect existence is not merely the absence of imperfection. It also includes a positive fullness of being.
We may call an unlimited positive feature a great-making feature. Power, knowledge, consciousness, goodness, or some more basic form of actuality are traditional candidates. The positive theory does not yet say that foundational reality possesses every great-making feature. Nor does it identify which such features are fundamental. It requires only that the nature of foundational reality contain at least one positive magnitude that is not bounded at some arbitrary finite degree.
This addition gives the theory greater content. Consider a reality that lacks finite size, shape, or composition but has no positive actuality beyond the absence of these limits. Such a reality might satisfy a purely negative description. Yet it would be unclear how it could serve as the source or ground of anything else. The positive theory excludes this thin interpretation. Foundational reality does not merely lack limiting boundaries. It contains some unlimited positive basis for what it is or what it can do.
This proposal immediately raises a question about greatness. What does it mean for a feature to be great-making? To keep the positive theory neutral, we leave open several options.
One option is an objectivist account. On this account, a great-making feature contributes positively to the intrinsic value or excellence of the reality that possesses it. Its value is grounded in the nature of the feature rather than in anyone’s attitudes toward it. A traditional view is that knowledge, understanding, consciousness, and goodness have this kind of intrinsic value.
A second option appeals to fitting attitudes. On this account, a feature is great-making if its possession makes a reality fittingly admirable, desirable, or lovable for its own sake. The fittingness of these attitudes may then be understood in different ways. A subjectivist account might analyze it in terms of what conscious beings can value for its own sake. A being might, for example, value the experience of peace simply because of what that experience is. Alternatively, a rationalist account might understand fittingness in terms of rational constraints. It may be rational to value peace for its own sake, while it would be irrational to love suffering merely for the sake of suffering. The relevant notion of rationality may itself require further analysis, which we leave open.
These accounts need not compete. A feature may be fittingly admirable precisely because it contributes objective value to its possessor. Still, the positive theory need not depend on a complete theory of value or fitting attitudes. We can formulate its central idea more neutrally. Foundational reality possesses some positive actuality, and this actuality is not fundamentally restricted to a particular finite degree. In this sense, the foundation contains positive being without limit.
Leibniz develops a closely related conception of perfection. He sometimes describes perfection in terms of the amount or magnitude of positive reality. He also writes that “perfection is nothing but the amount of essence” (Leibniz 1989, 150). The idea is not merely that a more perfect reality has a longer list of properties. Rather, realities may differ in the positive content, richness, or fullness of their natures. The more essence or positive reality a being contains, the more perfect it is.
On this Leibnizian picture, the most perfect reality contains the maximal possible amount of positive reality. Leibniz reasons that the ultimate substance is without limits and contains as much reality as possible. He concludes that this substance is absolutely perfect, where perfection is understood as the magnitude of positive reality considered apart from the limits found in finite things (Leibniz 1989, 218; Monadology §§40–41). Perfect existence is therefore not an empty absence of defects. It is maximal fullness.
This conception also helps explain why some features appear to be perfections while others do not. Leibniz suggests that a perfection is a positive feature that admits of a highest degree. Knowledge and power may have maximal forms. Number and shape do not. There is no greatest possible number or greatest possible shape. These features therefore do not qualify as perfections in the same way (Leibniz 1989, 35; Discourse on Metaphysics §1).
The positive theory captures part of this Leibnizian insight without committing us to the entire Leibnizian framework. It says that perfection includes some positive fullness rather than mere freedom from limitation. It does not yet say that every positive reality can be combined within one being. Nor does it say that foundational reality possesses maximal knowledge, power, goodness, and consciousness. Those stronger conclusions require further principles about which features contribute to essence, how they may be measured, and whether they can be unified within one nature.
The appeal to essence nevertheless deepens the theory. Suppose that two possible foundations were equally free from arbitrary finite limits, but one possessed a greater range or depth of positive actuality. The minimal theory might not distinguish between them. The positive theory can. Other things being equal, the reality with more positive being would count as more perfect. A reality with maximal essence would be one beyond which no greater positive fullness is possible.
This development also increases the theory’s explanatory and predictive power. The minimal theory primarily tells us what foundational reality is not. The positive theory begins to tell us what the foundation is. It predicts that foundational reality is not empty, inert, or wholly privative. It possesses some unlimited positive resource. Depending on the nature of that resource, the theory may also help explain how finite realities derive their being, powers, or positive features from the foundation.
The theory’s predictive power nevertheless remains limited. It tells us that the foundation possesses some unlimited positive feature, but it does not identify that feature. The relevant positive actuality might consist in power, consciousness, goodness, or something more fundamental. Different candidates could support very different predictions about what foundational reality is like and what it would produce. The positive theory therefore offers more content than the minimal theory, but it still leaves the nature of the foundation substantially underdetermined.
The additional content also introduces new conceptual questions. Can positive being be measured on a single scale? Can knowledge, power, goodness, and consciousness be compared as quantities of essence? Does a reality have more essence by possessing a greater number of positive features, by possessing them more intensely, or by possessing a more unified nature? It is also possible that some positive features cannot coexist. If so, maximal essence cannot be understood simply as the unrestricted accumulation of every apparently great-making property.
These questions reconnect the positive theory with the coherence challenge. The minimal theory largely avoids conflicts among attributes because it attributes relatively little to foundational reality. The positive theory takes the first step beyond that safety. Once we say that the foundation possesses unlimited positive actuality, we need to understand what that actuality could coherently be. A proposed great-making feature might become incoherent when taken without limit. Several such features might also conflict when combined.
The positive theory offers a genuine increase in explanatory power, but it also introduces new philosophical risks. By presenting perfection as positive fullness, it gives us a richer picture of foundational reality and connects more directly with the traditional idea of maximal essence. Yet this additional content raises difficult questions. How should positive reality be measured? Which features contribute to it? And can maximal essence be instantiated within a single coherent nature?
A further question concerns the relationship between the positive and minimal theories. It is possible that the minimal theory entails the positive theory. Perhaps any reality that lacks every limiting imperfection must possess at least one positive feature without limit. Whether this inference succeeds depends on deeper questions about value, magnitude, and being. We therefore leave the relationship between the two theories as an open question for further investigation.
Whatever the answer, the positive theory marks a further stage in our understanding of perfection. It makes explicit the idea that perfect existence involves positive fullness, not merely the absence of limitation. The next question is how far this fullness extends.
The maximal theory extends the positive theory in a more ambitious direction. The positive theory requires foundational reality to possess at least one unlimited positive feature. The maximal theory says that foundational reality possesses every compossible pure perfection. Perfect existence is thus not merely positive fullness in some respect. It is the greatest coherent fullness of being.
A pure perfection is a feature that contributes positively to the greatness or intrinsic value of its possessor without, by itself, entailing any defect or disvalue. Knowledge, understanding, goodness, rationality, power, and consciousness are traditional candidates. Each appears to add something positive to the reality that possesses it. By contrast, features such as having a particular shape or occupying a particular volume introduce specific limits. They are not pure perfections in the relevant sense. Still, the precise inventory of pure perfections requires further investigation.
The qualification concerning compossibility is essential. Some features may be positive when considered separately but incapable of belonging together within one nature. A maximally perfect reality need not possess incompatible properties. Rather, it possesses every pure perfection that can coherently belong together. In a more cautious formulation, maximal perfection consists in the greatest coherent combination of positive features appropriate to a single nature.
Maximality should therefore not be understood as the simple accumulation of every apparently valuable property. Nor does it automatically require the greatest independently conceivable degree of each attribute. The degree of one perfection may constrain the possible degree or expression of another. Perfect goodness, for example, may restrict how perfect power can be exercised. The relevant aim is not to maximize each feature in isolation, but to maximize the coherent whole.
This approach resembles Yujin Nagasawa’s maximal conception of God. Rather than defining God simply as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent in the strongest independently formulated senses, Nagasawa proposes that God possesses the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence (Nagasawa 2017). This formulation takes the coherence challenge seriously. It allows the content of one divine attribute to be constrained by its relation to the others while preserving the idea that the resulting being is unsurpassably great.
The maximal theory developed here is broader than Nagasawa’s proposal. It is not restricted to knowledge, power, and goodness, and it does not initially identify foundational reality with God. It concerns every pure perfection that can belong coherently to a single foundational nature. Nagasawa’s account nevertheless illustrates the central strategy: perfection is understood holistically, in terms of a maximally excellent and internally consistent nature, rather than atomistically, by maximizing each proposed attribute in isolation.
This holistic approach also fits the traditional project of perfect being theology. Perfect being theologians seek to understand the divine nature by asking which features belong to the greatest possible being. Oppy likewise discusses perfection in terms of excellences and examines whether there can be a being that possesses the greatest coherent combination of them (Oppy 2014). The maximal theory follows this general model. Yet it leaves open important questions about how excellences are identified, ordered, compared, and combined.
The maximal theory is stronger than the minimal and positive theories. The minimal theory excludes arbitrary finite limits but leaves open which positive features foundational reality possesses. The positive theory adds at least one unlimited positive feature. The maximal theory supplies a more comprehensive picture. It portrays foundational reality as wholly excellent, possessing every pure perfection that can belong together within one nature.
This may account also provide greater predictive power. If knowledge, power, consciousness, rationality, and goodness are pure perfections, then the maximal theory predicts that foundational reality possesses them in their greatest mutually compatible forms. The theory may therefore support conclusions about the nature, activity, and effects of the ultimate foundation. It begins to resemble a substantive conception of God rather than a merely abstract account of fundamental existence.
The increase in predictive power, however, brings a corresponding increase in philosophical risk. Someone might question whether a proposed perfection is coherent even by itself. Someone might instead argue that two genuine perfections cannot belong to the same subject. The apparent tension between perfect power and necessary goodness illustrates the latter concern. Other questions arise concerning the relationships between knowledge and freedom, simplicity and consciousness, or immutability and responsiveness.
The maximal theory also faces a problem of comparison. There may be several internally coherent combinations of positive features without a single combination that is best in every respect. One package might include more of one excellence, while another includes more of a different excellence. Unless these packages can be ordered on a common scale, it may be unclear whether there is a greatest coherent combination at all. Maximality may therefore require a substantive account of how different forms of greatness contribute to the excellence of a whole nature.
These difficulties bring us back to the coherence puzzle. The minimal theory largely avoids conflicts among attributes by making few positive commitments. The positive theory introduces at least one unlimited positive feature. The maximal theory places the coherence question at its center. It claims not merely that foundational reality has positive fullness, but that every compossible form of positive fullness is unified within one nature.
The maximal theory thus offers the richest account considered so far. It has greater explanatory reach and more substantial implications. Yet its success depends on whether there is a coherent and genuinely maximal combination of pure perfections. An objection to one proposed combination would not automatically undermine the minimal or positive theories. It would, however, place direct pressure on the maximal theory and its claim that perfect existence includes the greatest coherent fullness of being.
Finally, we consider an analysis of perfection in terms of what is possible. According to the modal theory, a perfect being is a greatest possible being. Such a being is unsurpassable: no possible being is greater, and no being could possess a greater overall nature. This conception is central to much of perfect being theology because it connects perfection with the question of how great a being could possibly be (Speaks 2018).
Speaks’ critique of this approach helps reveal two broad concerns. The first concerns the scope of perfect power. An unrestricted conception of maximal power may seem to require power over impossible states of affairs. Could a perfect being make a circle have incompatible radii? If perfect power includes the ability to bring about any describable result, then the theory appears to generate incoherence.
A standard response is that impossible descriptions do not specify genuine outcomes or tasks. A circle with incompatible radii is not something that could be produced, because there is no such possible state of affairs. The inability to make an impossibility is therefore not a deficiency of power. Perfect power extends to everything genuinely possible, not to combinations of words that fail to describe possible outcomes.
This response, however, gives rise to a deeper concern, as Speaks draws out. Suppose that the structure of possibility is fixed independently of the perfect being. Modal reality might then impose arbitrary limits on how great any being could be. Imagine, for example, that no being could possibly create more than (10^{80}) particles. The greatest possible being would be limited to creating that number, not because of any deficiency in its own nature, but because an independent modal structure imposes the ceiling.
In that case, the modal theory is too weak to capture the kind of perfection we seek. A being could count as the greatest possible being merely because modal space permits nothing greater. Its unsurpassability would reflect the poverty of the possibilities rather than the intrinsic excellence of its nature. The description greatest possible being therefore cannot by itself tell us what counts as greatness or explain why the relevant possibilities have the structure they do. Thus, the concept of the greatest possible being does not seem to go far enough to capture the concept of perfection.
We propose, therefore, that the modal theory should be treated as derivative rather than fundamental. We should first understand perfection in terms of the intrinsic nature of foundational reality. We may then understand the relevant possibilities in relation to that nature. On this approach, a perfect reality is not great merely because nothing greater happens to be possible. It is unsurpassable because its intrinsic nature lacks imperfection and contains the relevant positive features without fundamental limit.
The first three theories provide possible foundations for this modal conclusion. At a minimum, perfect existence lacks arbitrary finite limitations. A stronger theory adds some unlimited positive feature. A still stronger theory includes every compossible pure perfection. The modal theory may then express the unsurpassability that follows from one of these more fundamental accounts. This ordering prevents an unexplained modal structure from becoming the ultimate standard of perfection.
In this chapter, we clarified four increasingly substantive theories of perfect existence. The minimal theory understands perfection as freedom from arbitrary finite limits. The positive theory adds some unlimited positive feature or fullness of being. The maximal theory includes every compossible pure perfection. The modal theory presents a perfect being as unsurpassable, while treating this modal status as grounded in a more fundamental account of intrinsic perfection.
This progression also clarified the coherence challenge. Stronger theories offer greater explanatory and predictive power, but they create more opportunities for apparent conflict among attributes. We therefore distinguished the root concept of perfection from the more ambitious theories that develop it. An objection to one substantive account need not undermine every form of the perfection hypothesis.
The next task is to consider reasons to think that foundational reality is perfect in some sense. We therefore turn from clarifying the hypothesis to motivating it.
Flint, Thomas P., and Alfred J. Freddoso. 1983. “Maximal Power.” In The Existence and Nature of God, edited by Alfred J. Freddoso, 81–113. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Morris, Thomas V. 1987. Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Morriston, Wes. 2001. “Omnipotence and Necessary Moral Perfection: Are They Compatible?” Religious Studies 37 (2): 143–160.
Oppy, Graham. 2014. Describing Gods: An Investigation of Divine Attributes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Speaks, Jeff. 2018. The Greatest Possible Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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