Theists: What do you mean when you say that God is 'perfect'?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Good topic, Jor. I would have to refer back to Question 3 of the Summa Theologica, but as I recall Divine Perfection has more to do with completeness than anything else. God is perfect in the sense that He is complete in Himself in need of nothing outside Himself.

So why did god create anything?

Because that is in His nature to give out of His excess and yet costs Him nothing. It is like seeing a smiling person who makes you smile. They are completely happy prior to your notice and remain happy regardless of how you respond. The pleasure you take from the other person's smile takes nothing away from him.

Two things to note here. First, this raises the question of what it means to be a 'good' example of the kind of which God is an example. As noted with Steve, there appears to be some deep circularity here if God is both the specimen of a completed kind of his type, and also the standard setter as to what constitutes the completeness of his kind.

I don’t know if it makes any sense to consider God a species within some other genus. My place-holder thought is that God serves as maximally great all-encompassing category like Plotinus’s mystical notion of “The All” or from the Book of Revelation, “the All in all.” That said, I have to punt on your objection. I’m still puzzling over this issue and will keep your concern in the back of my mind while doing so.

…second thing to note is that if there is such a circularity involved, it essentially returns us to the starting line with the issue of the enhanced Euthyphro and your solution that God by necessity is morally perfect.

I’m not exactly understanding the objection since I do not see a logical argument being made in the first place. To my mind it is more like a dictionary entry. “The Good” and “God” are synonyms united by Aristotle’s observation in the Nichomochean Ethics that what men should most desire derives from a common source. For Christians, Scripture tells us that we are to "Love the Lord your God above all else." That sounds to me like the highest good.

I would say the true circularity enters when people try to develop ethical theories in the absence of some notion of a single highest good from which all other goods are derived. It has been my position all along that people choose whether or not to recognize that there is a highest Good, something most to be desired, that serves as an arbiter when deciding among various apparent goods, such as between temporary pleasure or loyalty to principle. It is only by choosing to believe there is some kind of highest good that allows people to debate about the relative value of some moral principle versus some other. Otherwise there can be no shoulds.