Abstract

Perfect being or Anselmian theology uses Anselm's concept of God as a means of thinking about the nature of God. In the Proslogion Anselm uses the method to identify which properties may be properly attributed to God and how such properties are compossible. ;Thomas Morris and George Schlesinger are contemporary proponents of this method. The method is a priori and relies heavily on religious, value, and modal intuitions to identify a set of properties which together constitute maximal greatness. Morris uses the method to address a number of issues relative to the traditional divine properties. Schlesinger uses the method to rebut claims that theism is incoherent because certain divine properties are incompatible. ;Many objections are raised against perfect being theology. William Wainwright questions the connection between the God of religious devotion and the God of Anselm. Jorge Gracia challenges the use of positive terms like "supremely great" to describe God. Richard Gale argues that the concept of an absolutely perfect being is not clearly coherent. Leon Pearl and Scott Hestevold object to Schlesinger's response to claims that theism is incoherent. Barry Miller claims that Anselmian theology is too anthropomorphic. I argue that some of these objections are valid but none fatally undermine the legitimacy of the method. ;The concept of intrinsic goodness is central to perfect being theology. Noah Lemos's theory of intrinsic value for ethics is adapted to provide a fuller theoretical grounding for the concept of intrinsic goodness in perfect being theology. However, judgments about intrinsic goodness ultimately depend on intuition. ;Wainwright and Peter van Inwagen argue that there are good reasons to distrust the intuitions needed to resolve disputes in philosophical theology. Without a method to judge between conflicting intuitions, Anselmian theology has little to offer. Alvin Plantinga's theory of warrant as proper function can provide an epistemological framework for Morris's view of intuition. This account suggests several strategies for resolving disagreements about intuitions but leaves many questions unanswered. The ultimate viability of perfect being theology depends on an account of intuition which better answers these questions