'A More Beautiful Argument' from Perfection - Brad Jersak

Back in the day, from philosophers like Aristotle (in his Metaphysics) to theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, our best thinkers worked hard to develop rational proofs for the existence of God. Thomas summarized five of these in his massive book, Summa Theologica. The big five included:

• argument from motion (or 'the unmoved mover') - we see things in motion, something must ultimately cause the first motion, namely an 'unmoved mover,' who is God.

• argument from first cause (or 'efficient cause') - we see an order of cause and effect--nothing causes itself--so something must ultimately be the 'first efficient cause' of everything, who is God. 

• argument from contingency (or possibility & necessity) - we can see that everything in the world can possibly be or not be, but nothing is necessary in itself. They are 'contingent.' But to cause all these contingencies, there must be some being necessary in himself: God.

• argument from degree (or perfection) - we see that everything by degrees is better or worse. There must be something perfect which causes every other goodness or perfection, namely God.

• argument from design (or teleology) - we see that everything is designed to achieve the end for which it was designed. There must be an intelligent being directing everything to that end, namely God.

Bear with me, I'm not going to try to prove God exists. Some of these arguments have been soundly refuted, then defended, abandoned or upgraded. Not my job. I don't know about 'proving God' rationally. But eventually I want to borrow Aquinas' argument for perfection to say something about God's nature, if you believe in God already as a faith statement. Aquinas' argument from perfection basically runs like this:

1. Every object we know of has properties to greater or lesser extents--degrees of goodness or beauty or perfection ranging from worse to better. 
2. If an object has a lesser property, like 'not as good,' and others are 'better,' then there must exist some other object that has that property to the maximum possible degree--i.e. perfection.
3. So there must be some entity that has all properties to the maximum possible degree--a perfect being. That being would be God.
4. Therefore, God must exist.

Of course, the big objection to this argument is that just because you can imagine perfection, doesn't guarantee any such perfection exists. Just because you can imagine 'Mr. Perfect' doesn't prove he exists. Just ask my wife. If you google, 'Who is the most perfect man in the world?' today you might see Chris Pratt ... but somehow their perfection is a short-lived period of celebrity, so no, not perfect (though his wife, Anna Faris, might say 'Darn close.'). The Dos Equis beer ads tout 'the world's most interesting man,' and I have to admit, he's pretty interesting ... but not nearly perfect. You'll also see an admission that there's no perfect man via the many images of amalgamations of the perfect facial and body parts. And you'll get answers to the question ranging from "I am" to "No one," which may be the truest (but not perfect) answer online. Thus, the statement, "The perfect man doesn't exist" is an argument against Aquinas, which you could amplify into "The perfect God doesn't exist just because you fantasize about such a God."

BUT what if God does exist? And this is where I want to propose an argument from perfection for the nature, rather than the existence, of God.

IF God exists, then we might posit a definition (borrowed from the philosophers and scholastics) something like this:

• God is perfection itself.
• God is the perfection of all we call goodness.
• God is the perfection of all we call beauty, truth and justice.
• God is the perfection of all we call love. 

• 
  If you can conceive of a more perfect God than you imagine now, then you must abandon your less perfect god--your imperfect god--in favour of the most perfect God you can conceive. In fact, God is even more perfect, a greater good, a deeper love, a better justice, a more ravishing beauty and a more glorious truth than the best you can imagine, since he is not just the perfection, but the transcendence of all these traits.

• If you can conceive of a God of more perfect and transcendent in goodness, beauty, truth and justice than the one you worship today, then you must take the greater God, because he IS perfection, and he is even greater than all you can imagine or conceive.

• If you can conceive of a God who is more perfectly LOVE in his very being, then your less loving god must go, because God IS love ... perfect love, according to 1 John.

• If your theological system requires you to concede to belief in a god who is less perfect in his love than Paul's "beyond all you could ask or imagine," and more limited in his mercy than "forever" and "as high as the heavens are above the earth" (think Hubble images) then your theology requires an imperfect god and it's creating an idol. You can ask God for the power of the Spirit in your inner self to 'see' how high, wide and deep his love, as in Eph. 3.

• If your imagination has trouble with something as abstract as perfection and transcendence, fear not! Because God has unveiled the perfection of his love and goodness by transposing it into the true Mr. Perfect, Jesus Christ. The Incarnation is perfect theology of the perfect God, revealed especially and surprisingly as 'cruciform love.' The perfection of love is seen in the self-giving, radically forgiving and co-suffering life of Christ, who is Goodness Incarnate.

So you can see that this more beautiful argument from perfection does not attempt to prove the existence of God at all, but rather:

• It assumes that God is.
• It defines God as the perfection and transcendence of goodness and love.
• It challenges any theology that falls short of that God.
• It manifests in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ as perfect, cruciform theology.