ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the conception of God as essentially perfectly morally good. It argues that God counts as an absolutely perfect being only if by God’s very nature God is such that God cares for the rational and sentient creatures in existence and prevents from suffering pointlessly. The chapter identifies some of the most vulnerable parts of the case made by Mark C. Murphy. It provides two arguments, one for the conclusion that God has requiring reason to treat persons in ways that include preventing setbacks to their welfare, and the other for the conclusion that God has requiring reason to prevent the suffering of sentient beings. The chapter suggests that philosophers think of moral goodness as appropriate responsiveness to value, or to particular sorts of value; to be morally good is for one’s agency—one’s desires, one’s deliberation, one’s action—to be fittingly responsive to values of the sorts that are at stake in morality.
