"As for God, his way is perfect: The Lord�s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him." -2 Samuel 22:31

"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." -Matthew 5:48

"...surely Allah has power over all things... Allah will perfect His light..." -Surah 3:165, 61:8

Perfection is one of the most common attributes given to any deity, but what does it mean to say that god is perfect? Different answers to this question have arisen throughout history, but behind them all, a number of problems still persist with the idea of a perfect god. Would a perfect god have needs? Desires? Would it be capable of some of the vicious commands issued in the Hebrew scriptures? What relationship can perfection have with imperfection? In this article, we will look at some of the arguments against the existence and interaction of a perfect god.

I. A Brief History of Perfection

The oldest definition of perfection goes back to Aristotle, who said that perfection is completeness, or lacking nothing. This understanding is echoed in James 1:4. Interestingly, perfection has not always been an attribute of god in the history of Christian theology. Although the passage from Matthew quoted above seems to lend support to the idea of a perfect god, Christian theologians, up until the time of Rene Descartes, rejected the application of perfection to the creator. Only a finite being can be perfect, they believed, because only in such a case does it make sense to speak of lacking nothing. Others argued that all human concepts, even perfection, are inadequate to describe the supreme being.

In the 17th century, Descartes spoke of the perfections of god, a plurality of attributes emphasizing the general perfect nature of the deity. Contemporary German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz concurred with Descartes, but redefined perfection in a different way. In his Monadology, Leibniz observed that, "Only that is perfect which possesses no limits, that is, only God." This notion of perfection as having no limits shows relation to the omni- attributes of god, each of which postulates that god is unlimited in a particular way (power, knowledge, presence, love). The 18th century philosopher Christian Wolff again redefined perfection as that which completely achieves its purpose.

For this article, I will go with Aristotle's definition of perfection, as I believe it subsumes the others into it. If something is lacking in nothing, it will have no limitations, since a limit implies a lack of completion. To say that someone is limited in authority is to say that they lack complete authority. In addition, if something is not lacking anything, it will not be lacking in the fulfillment of its purpose. A watch that does not lack its necessary components will be completely achieving its purpose of telling the time.

So if perfection is understood as lacking in nothing, what does this imply for the concept of a perfect god? A perfect being cannot improve itself or be made any better, and thus it has no reason to feel dissatisfication or malcontent. If god lacks nothing, it has no needs, and if god is content, it has no desires. But if a perfect god cannot have needs or desires, can it actually do anything?

II. Creation & Imperfection

To take action is to change things, and changing things implies dissatisfaction. If one is content with the way things are, one will not want to change them. However, the god of the Abrahamic religions did change things - several times. To begin with, it decided to create the universe, changing the state of reality from whatever it was prior to creation. If god is perfect, content, and lacking in nothing, it would have no need or desire to create a universe. In Genesis 1:31, god looks over his newly made creations and declares them to be good, yet by what standard are they good? No being would change things for no reason, thus god must have been dissatisfied with the way things were before.

But the problem is that if god was all that existed before space and time were created, the only thing it could have been dissatisfied with would be itself. A perfect being should be content even when it's alone, because it is by definition complete, which means that it has no unsatisfied needs and no unfulfilled desires. Some Christians will respond to this by saying that god didn't necessarily need or want to create the universe, but he did it as an act of glorifying himself. Yet this still implies that god saw some benefit in creation, as something to improve his glory, and, like already mentioned, a perfect being cannot improve itself and so should not desire even to act for its own glory. The point is that a perfect being would be perfect in glory too.

Another problem arises from the idea that imperfection can result from perfection. According to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, through the fall of Adam and Eve, the goodness of creation was corrupted and sin was brought into the world. But just how could this happen? A change occurs only in what has the potential for change; a caterpillar changes into a butterfly because it has the potential for that change contained in its DNA. God is unchanging, believers often say, and because he is perfect, there should be no potential for imperfection in him. So how is it that a perfect being can create something that has the potential for corruption, that becomes imperfect?

Creation and imperfection are not the products of a perfect god, but merely the myths of imperfect, creative human beings.

III. Imperfection in Action

We can actually see why it's problematic for a perfect being to take action by looking at the alleged actions of god in the Abrahamic traditions. Not long after creating Adam and Eve, according to the bible, god notices corruption in the world and decides to flood the entire earth, killing all but one family. One has to wonder, if god is perfect in knowledge, how did he not see this coming? If he did see it, then why would he create and allow the corruption to occur in the first place? If god could not have done things any differently, something that would have excluded corruption altogether, then there is a seriously fatal implication here about the nature of god. If corruption is inevitable, then god is not truly perfect. On the other hand, if god could have done things in a way that would not have allowed for corruption, then why didn't he? This too seems like the work of an imperfect being.

Shortly after the flood, we once again find god disapproving of the behavior of human beings. To prevent the Tower of Babel from reaching the heavens, the almighty creator strikes them with language barriers, confusing them into leaving the work unfinished. Apparently he also caused them to instantly forget their original language, and must have magically destroyed their building plans too, as no intelligent culture would endeavor to construct a massive tower without making some sort of architectural blueprint first. Again, one has to ask: did god not see this coming? If he did, why allow things to get to that point of corruption? It almost seems as if god is powerless to stop corruption until it's already happened.

Third time's the charm, right? Following up on the Tower of Babel incident, god discovers rampant evil in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, so much of it that it yet again warrants completely obliterating all but one family. But couldn't a perfectly good and perfectly loving god find a better way of correcting imperfection in its creation? It could be argued that murdering so many people is a shining example of imperfection, and it would certainly be preferrable that such a violent being would rather have never created his victims than use such an immoral method of "purification." This is also another case of how god's qualities, like perfect justice and perfect mercy, conflict with each other.

You might think god would have learned his lesson by the third time, especially as a so-called perfect being, but you would be wrong. After centuries more bloodshed, he finally decides that he will one day end it all for the entire wicked universe. The corruptions will be destroyed and burn eternally in Hades. How this corrects anything is difficult to see. If the last part of the 'plan' is uncreation, what does this say about the initial act of creation? Was it really a good idea? If god had never created this universe, how much suffering and death would he be sparing? When the meaning of perfection is ignored and god is said to take action, we see a fantastic mess of inconsistencies, contradictions, and immorality.

IV. The Problem of a Perfect Being

The real problem here is not with god, but with the concept of perfection and its application to any being. It is often said that humans are not perfect, and this is very true. However, no being, finite or not, is perfect. Because perfection means to lack nothing, a perfect being cannot have needs or unsatisfied desires. In turn, this means that, as already stated, a perfect being cannot act, for it should have no reason to act. Even an arbitrary action would arguably be in conflict with the idea of a perfect being, which should not be lacking in purpose either. Ultimately, we are left with a perfect being that literally does nothing. It may think, but all it will think of is perfection, and if it is the only perfect thing in existence, all it will think of is itself! A perfect, self-absorbed, inactive being.

But in what sense is this a being anymore? All known beings in this universe interact with other things, even by accident or outside influence. Something that interacts with nothing would be less of a being and more like nothing. In my opinion, this is what the perfect being is: a concept, devoid of meaningful substance. It is the product of human imagination. The perfect god is as much a fiction as the perfect being.