What is this perfect goodness, a particular perfection exhibited by any absolutely perfect being?
If moral goodness is rejected as a pure perfection, it does not follow that there is no sense in which perfect goodness is a specific perfection.
After all, we might understand perfect goodness as the specific perfection of divine agency without taking the relevant standards to be the familiar welfare-oriented moral standards.
8. Whether divine moral perfection should be understood as perfect goodness, perfect virtue, or an optimal combination of goodness and virtue, depends upon whether the correct theory of morality is consequentialist, deontological, or mixed (that is, a mixture of core elements of consequentialist and deontological moral theories).
But if his perfect goodness requires him to create the good world, how is it possible that he was free to create the inferior world or not to create any world?
Initially, one may be tempted to solve this problem by viewing God's perfect goodness (which includes his absolute moral perfection) as analogous to our goodness.
But if God's perfect goodness requires him to create the very good world, rather than creating the inferior world or not creating a world at all, what are we to make of that part of the idea of God that declares that he created the world freely?
If so, it seems that God's perfect goodness would require him to create the very good world.
So why should God's perfect goodness preclude his being free to create a less good world, or even a bad world?
Thus we see that perfect goodness is often included in lists of the perfections exhibited by an absolutely perfect being: that being would not only be omniscient and omnipotent, but would also be perfectly good.
It is worth noting, though, that there is a crucial argument that typically relies on perfect goodness (understood as perfect moral goodness) as a perfection in order to argue that there is no absolutely perfect being.
