The slippery slope of Perfect Being Theology

Stripping Down God to the “Mini-maximal” Being

Abstract

Perfect Being Theism has been reformulated by Nagasawa to avoid putative conflicts between omni-properties inside God by downgrading either of any two conflicting properties. This move has recently been pressed further by others vindicating a “fluctuating maximal God”, a God that needn’t be the highest possible being at any moment of time (nor at any place in space), as long as he will eventually be the highest possible being by the end of time. With this new conception of God, they claim to answer the most intractable conundrums of the problem of evil.

I criticize this conception of “God” because it does not meet many of the standard requirements for being God, neither philosophical (logical, metaphysical) nor religious (theological, devotional, pastoral). In sum, it is not a God who inspires awe, devotion and ultimate hope, and so cannot be the proper object of religious attitudes of any monotheist within the Abrahamic traditions.