To Will What is Best

It may be tempting to say that God must always will what is best as opposed to good, but it would violate His nature as perfection itself. Consider these three claims:

1. An intellect wills what it believes is best; and
2. Perfection is unbounded self-unity; and
3. God is all-powerful.

These three claims cannot be true together. When we examine God’s Nature as a perfect intellect, we find that claim one and two must be true; for God is (2) absolutely simple and (3) He is identical to pure power itself (see “Classical Theism”). As it turns out, claims two and three necessitate that God can always create something greater because there are an infinite amount of metaphysically possible creatures which approach the limit of His unbound goodness. This is a basic math problem: the amount of numbers which approach infinity is an infinite amount. Thusly, there are an infinite amount of created natures God could create which each could respectively approach closer to His own (without ever being capable of reaching it). So, as it turns out, there is no best option for a pure intellect.

We have a best option when thinking because we have a finite, imperfect set of options to choose from—He does not. If we were to to choose from an infinite set of options whereby there is always a better options no matter which we pick, then our intellect grasping naturally towards what is good would not look like picking the best option. On the contrary, what it would look like is never choosing an option that is bad. Consequently, claim one is false.