Perfection

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PERFECTION

The concept of "perfection" has two closely allied and often overlapping meanings. First, it means "completeness," "wholeness," or "integrity": X is perfect when he (or it) is free from all deficiencies. Second, it means the achievement of an end or a goal. This meaning emerges most clearly from the connection between the Greek words teleios ("perfect") and telos ("end" or "goal"). An entity is perfect (to use Aristotelian terms) when it has achieved its goal by actualizing its potentialities and realizing its specific form. Bringing these two meanings together, one would say that a thing is complete or entire when it has fulfilled its nature and thereby reached its "end." The concept is best examined first under its religious, and second under its moral, aspect.

Divine Perfection

It has not always been believed that God (or, more generally, "the divine") is perfect. Thus, the deities of the Homeric pantheon were both ontologically and morally deficient. They differed from men only in being "deathless" (athanatoi ). But in Christian theology the perfection of God has always been affirmed by orthodox writers. In St. Anselm's celebrated definition, God is id quo nihil maius cogitari possit ("that than which nothing greater can be conceived"). St. Thomas Aquinas later maintained that since God is self-existent, he must be infinite (or limitless) in intelligence, goodness, and power. He also claimed, in the fourth of his five Ways, to prove the existence of God as absolute perfection from the limited degrees of perfection in creatures. Thomists hold that by the "analogy of proportionality" we can attribute to God "in a more eminent way" (eminentiori modo ) every "pure" perfection that exists in creatures (that is, every perfection that is capable of preexisting in an infinitely spiritual degree).

Those who hold this view of God's infinity must face two questions that have continually perplexed Christian philosophers. First, can we intelligibly assert that all perfections coexist infinitely in a single being? Thus, can God be both infinitely just and infinitely merciful? Second, if God is both infinitely powerful and infinitely good, how can we explain the presence of evil in the world?

Moral Perfection

Ever since men began to reflect on the moral life, they have been aware of some perfect ideal of character and conduct toward which they must strive. Thus, in the Greco-Roman world the Stoics wrote copiously of the "perfect" (teleios ) man. In their view perfection consisted in the subjugation of the passions to reason (logos ) in a state of "self-sufficiency" (autarkeia ). Sometimes they regarded moral virtue as the imitation of divine perfection, and sometimes they held out a human figure (especially Socrates) as the model of excellence; but more often they wrote abstractly of their ideal "wise man."

There can be no doubt that Jesus required moral perfection of those who would follow him. Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount, he told his disciples, "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). In saying this Jesus reaffirmed the Old Testament, in which the Jews, as the people of the covenant, are required to be perfect (or "holy") by obedience to the law (Torah ) which embodies God's will and reflects his character. The above-mentioned verses (Matthew 5:38–47) show that love, especially love of one's enemies, is the element in divine perfection that disciples are to imitate. Jesus' moral perfectionism was further expressed in his demands for complete inward purity (Matthew 5:21–22, 27–28) and self-renunciation (Mark 8:34–38).

Inevitably, theologians have affirmed that moral perfection is the goal of the Christian life. In the New Testament epistles perfection has three main characteristics. First, the norm of perfection is Christ himself, as the Incarnation of God. Second, the essence of perfection is love—the divine love revealed in Christ and made available to believers through the Spirit. Thus, St. Paul, having listed several virtues, wrote, "And above all these put on love, which is the bond of perfectness" (Colossians 3:14). Third, perfection is corporate. Thus, the author of Ephesians looks forward to the time when "we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to perfect manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (4:13). Postbiblical theologians (for example, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) continued to give primacy to love, by which all the natural virtues are supernaturally perfected.

Two comments on this Christian scheme are relevant. First, as early as St. Ambrose there emerged a distinction between the basic "precepts" according to which all Christians were expected to live and the "counsels of perfection" that only a few ("the religious") could follow. This distinction, which persisted throughout the Middle Ages, was based on such texts as Matthew 19:16–22 and could be plausibly represented as an attempt to combine adherence to Christ's absolute demands with a realistic attitude toward the spiritual capacities of the average Christian in a secular occupation. But it was rejected by the Reformers, and with special vehemence by Martin Luther.

Second, although some Christians have held that it is possible to achieve perfection (that is, sinlessness) in this life, the majority have held that the strength of original sin makes this impossible. Moreover, many biblical texts (particularly I John 1:8–10) imply the Lutheran view that all Christians remain throughout their mortal lives simul justi et peccatores ("at the same time justified and sinners"). From a purely philosophical standpoint Immanuel Kant held that since the moral law requires holiness, and since we cannot achieve it in this life, we must postulate another life in which an infinite progress toward it will be possible (Critique of Practical Reason, translated by T. K. Abbott, London, 1909, p. 218).

Finally, if we take human perfection in its widest sense to mean an ideal that satisfies man's deepest needs or fulfills his "true" being, we can see clear points of similarity between Christian and non-Christian systems. Thus, although humanists, Buddhists, and Christians have in common many virtues that they regard as normative, they put them in differing contexts. These virtues are practiced by the humanist as self-sufficient ends, by the Buddhist as means of entrance to nirvana, and by the Christian as both the outcome of present faith in God and a preparation for a future vision of him "face to face."

Bibliography

Flew, R. N. The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934.

Kirk, Kenneth E. The Vision of God. London: Longmans, Green, 1931.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. London: Harper, 1935. An important examination of Jesus' perfectionism and the problems that it raises.

Saunders, Kenneth. The Ideals of East and West. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1934.

H. P. Owen (1967)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy