(June 11, 2023 at 8:38 am)emjay Wrote: Even without that assumption though, it seems reasonable to say that 'want' and 'need' imply a lack, so an omni-everything God it seems would want or need nothing, and thus have no reason to create anything?
What you say here is the standard view of the theologians. God lacks nothing, therefore wants and needs nothing.
Creation is explained through the idea of bonum diffusivum sui -- "goodness spreads itself."
God is said to be goodness itself, and the nature of goodness is that it spreads goodness to others. (Someone who sat by himself all the time and spread no goodness to anyone else wouldn't be good. Goodness manifests by being good to others.) So they say that God created the world not because he needed something he lacked, but because he was superabundant and emanated the world from his goodness.
This won't make sense to those who insist on anthropomorphizing God, but it is pretty much the standard view among theologians since Plato.
