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If we accept that God is the greatest being there could possibly be, this will guide our theorizing about God. As Dr. Leftow explains, the method can be uncertain and hazardous. Still, it seems an indispensable tool in Christian thinking about God.
(Think about the alternatives: supposing that there could be a being who is greater than God, or remaining agnostic about whether or not there could be a being greater than God.)
In this episode, Dr. Leftow explains and illustrates this method of theologizing. The topics include:
- Where does this method come from? Is it found in the Bible?
- Is God timeless, or does he exist at all times?
- Is God both male and female? Or is God neither?
- How can God be both omnipotent and perfectly good? Aren’t these “perfections” contrary to one another?
- Must God always do the best?
- Can we argue that if God is perfect, he must be tri-personal, or at least multi-personal? Can we argue for the Trinity from divine love, and/or the idea that a “unipersonal” god would be lonely?
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Links for this episode: 
- Dr. Leftow’s home page
- Dr. Leftow’s books
- In this video for Closer to Truth, Dr. Leftow explains his understanding of the Trinity
- Dale’s attempt to summarize Dr. Leftow’s Trinity theory
- podcast 57 – Richard Swinburne on the Trinity
- podcast 58 – We can’t prove the Trinity by reason alone
- Tuggy, “On the Possibility of a Single Perfect Person“
- Judaic and Islamic Objections to the Trinity
- St. Thomas Aquinas @ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- This week’s thinking music is “Wake Up” by Kai Engel.
A big problem with Perfect Being Theology is that any attribute of God only makes sense within the context of his creation.
So for example being Omniscient only makes sense if there are things outside one’s self to know, being omnipotent only makes sense if there are things outside one’s self to Act on. In fact I don’t know if God can even be called God or Yahweh outside of the context of his creation, Yahweh means he causes to become, without creation God hasn’t caused anything to become, God as a term is relational, so outside creation God is simply what is, there is nothing to differentiate him with, there is only him, thus you can’t really give him any attributes.
So when you get to the all loving, or God being love, that only makes sense within creation, he loves his creation, if you say he needs to be love in himself, rather than in relation to creation, since we are talking about perfect being theology, it would presume that the attributes of God have any meaning outside creation, which I would argue they do not. So trying to posit a multipersonal being in order to try and fulfill that attribute is meaningless, you might as well argue that God is a being including different heiarchies since how could be be omnipotent if there was nothing for him to control over outside of creation, it’s just nonsense.
So Perfect Being theology ONLY makes sense within the context of creation, outside that context there is nothing really one can say about God at all, God is Love, God is omniscient, God is Omnipresent, God is eternal, all within the context of creation, none of those things make any sense outside of creation.
If anyone’s interested I wrote a post about Richard Swinburne’s a priori argument for the trinity (and perfect being theology in general) here:
https://theologyandjustice.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/richard-swinburnes-apriori-trinity-hegel-and-the-limits-perfect-being-theology/
Quick answers:
1. [a] Where does this method [PBT] come from? [b] Is it found in the
Bible?>>[a] from (heathen) philosophy; [b] nope
2. Is God timeless, or does he exist at all times?>>timeless, nevertheless he can and does interact in time a nd space with His creation
3. Is God both male and female? Or is God neither?>>neither, nevertheless in the OT God is mostly represented as (an old) man, and in the virgin birth He certainly chooses to play the Father part
4. How can God be both omnipotent and perfectly good? Aren’t these “perfections” contrary to one another?>>perfect justice and boundless mercy are certainly difficult to reconcile
5. Must God always do the best?>>depends whether we refer to an “itemized best” or a “compound best”
6. Can we argue that if God is perfect, he must be tri-personal, or at least
multi-personal? Can we argue for the Trinity from divine love, and/or the idea that a “unipersonal” god would be lonely?>>amusing questions, issuing from overwrought trinitarian apologists
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