Dr. Craig, are the ideas of God being existence itself and God as a maximally great being coherent with one another?

In my view, defining God as a maximally great being seems to place him within a category

that could limit his existence since it attributes certain characteristics to his ontology

rather than identifying him with existence itself.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Thank you for your time and for your dedication to ministry

and for helping young people like myself grow more confident in their faith.

Luca, Canada.

As perhaps you realize, Luca, your question concerns the conceptions of God

by two great medieval theologians, and some of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas. And some conceived of

God as a maximally great being, whereas Thomas held that God is the act of being

itself subsisting in Latin Ipsum essay subsistence. Are these conceptions compatible?

It's very difficult to see how they are compatible. For a maximally great

being must have various absolute perfections. For example, goodness. Such a being must have a whole

array of great-making properties. By contrast, on Thomas view, God has no properties

whatsoever. We can say, for example, that God is good, but such a statement is not literally true.

God's essence, if he even has an essence, is just the inconceivable act of

existence. Does Anselm's concept of God limit God? Not in any objectionable sense.

Anselm gives us a determinate concept of God. For example, God is good rather than evil.

But God's being perfectly good cannot be said to limit God. God is, quote, unquote, limited only

in the sense that he is a determinant being.

Those determinate properties are, however, unlimited, necessity, aseity, omnipotence,

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