Comparing Leibniz And Samuel Clarke's View Of God

Some philosophers, such as Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, hold that God’s nature entails that, if God chooses to create anything at all, it must be the best. On the other hand, Robert Adams argue contrary to this view and holds that God’s nature does not entail that God must create the best, but instead, it was a choice God made. Despite the strength and appeal to traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs of Adam’s view, I am to argue that God’s nature does indeed entail that He must create the best if He were to create anything at all because it would display a defect in God’s moral character as it is wrong to knowingly and voluntarily create creatures less than normal, therefore, in favour of Leibniz and Clarke’s view.
God’s Nature Entails that He
It only makes sense for an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being to choose to create the world with living beings, as evidently, it is the better world. For God to choose it would be for God to be doing “less than the best that he can do” (Rowe, p. 13), which, makes God less than perfectly good. Therefore, God’s perfect goodness requires that He create the best possible world if He were to create anything at all and that God is not free with respect to which world to create (Rowe, p. 13).
On the notion of necessity, Leibniz wants to clarify that he is arguing for the idea that God is bound by moral necessity for creating the best possible world and not absolute necessity (Rowe, p. 17). If God were bound by absolute necessity to create the best possible world, then it would entail that God has no power to do otherwise. But, metaphysically speaking, God has the power to create less than the best. Therefore, it is a moral necessity for God to create the best. If God did not create the best, it can be said that He is lacking in wisdom or in goodness (Rowe, p.
29). God has the power to do evil, but He is morally obligated not to act that way. This is essentially the same idea. God cannot act in evil ways or create things to lesser than what He is capable of because it would be in violation of His perfect goodness. In other words, God would be divesting himself of absolute perfection and destroying his own being (Rowe, p. 29). For example, a grandfather, though has the physical power to strangle his granddaughter, he does not have the power to will that it happen and is morally obligated not to do so (Rowe, p. 28). The same can be said about God with His creations. Though God has the power to destroy the world, He will not (Rowe, p. 28). In fact, God is morally obligated not to do so; therefore, God is unable to freely choose what to do. God’s liberty and actions are determined and limited by what a perfectly good being would be “allowed” to do (Rowe, p.