The Evolution of God
Fundamentally, on His 3rd level, God is goodness. God is a gift that keeps on giving. Now in order to give, one must first have, and so God by necessity must have a 2nd-level essence — which turns out to be personhood — and, if essence, then power. At logical moment 1 God wonders, “What am I going to do with all that power?” and, because God is good, He is driven to communicate His being to another. God therefore begets a Son to Whom He gives of Himself His divine nature, everything He has. This entails that God’s goodness is perfect, as He communicates to someone all of His own actuality, withholding nothing. Now just as goodness on the 3rd level is nothing more than communication of itself and of being, so the 2nd-level being communicated is, too, good. The metaphysical / moral / physical good distinction belongs to this 2nd level. Hence in willing to the Son the Father’s nature or the Father’s good, the Father loves the Son from which act the Holy Ghost spirates. God also comes to know Himself in the Son or the eternal Word. Level 2 is thereby fulfilled, in that we have God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Who, through knowing and loving Himself, is now perfectly happy. Thus we justify the paradoxical conclusion that happiness can only be attained in self-giving. Of course, God’s goodness did not exhaust itself in the begetting of the Son but bears further fruit in the form of creation.
The 2nd level is the realm of possible worlds. The best possible world is simply God Himself. He represents the best way to be. (Note carefully that the created universe is the best ideal world chosen by God from all the ideal worlds He could actualize; but it should not be referred to as the best possible world.) Just as negative theology belongs to level 1, positive or “perfect being” theology is used to work with level 2. Let’s go back to God’s 2nd-level personality, the spirit. Since it’s perfect, God is omnipotent. At logical moment 2 God “scans” Himself, wondering whether there is anything He cannot overcome, whether there are powers greater than His. And God realizes that in order to have absolute power, He must be both simple and unable to enter into composition with other things. For if God had parts or could form a compound, then the interaction of these parts would be governed by some natural laws which would be prior to God and would therefore condition and limit Him. God’s essence and power would be circumscribed by these necessities. As God is, however, the first being and pure act, He must be subject to no demands of how to behave.
From power, then, flow simplicity and perfect freedom. Now I have mentioned before that these are distinct notions. Speaking as a political philosopher, “One can have the right to do something but not the ability, or the ability but not the right. A person who is free from interference by other human beings may be severely limited as to what he can do. Conversely, a slave ever at his master’s beck and call can have considerable power and discretion to act as, for example, the overseer of other slaves.” Similar considerations apply in theology. Level 1 is thus fulfilled in the fact that God is free to do anything He can do. God is even free to make Himself composite or to permanently divest Himself of freedom; it’s just not in His power to do so. (And similarly, God has the power to do evil, but it’s not “in His goodness” to do so.)