The great chain of being and the glory of God

There are things with power but no knowledge or moral will: e.g., trees. There are things with power and knowledge but no moral will: e.g., horses. There are things with all three: e.g., human beings.

These fundamental attributes mark radical qualitative differences. I suspect there are infinitely many further possible fundamental attributes besides power, knowledge and moral will. A being that had one more of these attributes would be qualitatively as far above us as we are above horses or as far as horses are above trees. But just as a horse cannot conceive of moral will, and a tree cannot conceive of anything, we cannot conceive of what these further attributes would be. All we can do is speculate that then chain power, knowledge and moral will can be continued indefinitely.

God actually has all three of power, knowledge and moral will, and has each to its maximal perfection. If my suspicion about the chain continuing ad infinitum, then all the further attributes in the chain God also has to an infinite degree. (While remaining simple.) But we have no idea what they are.

An ontological argument based on powerful-making properties

1. (Premise) The property, WA, of being such that for every world w it is possible for one to weakly actualize w is a powerful-making property.
2. (Premise) No powerful-making property entails the property, PL, of being powerless.
3. If WA is not possibly exemplified, then it entails all properties. (Fact about property entailment)
4. So, WA is possibly exemplified. (1-3)
5. (Premise) Necessarily, if x weakly actualizes w then x exists and w has been actualized.

It follows by S5 that there actually exists a being that has WA and that has weakly actualized our world.

Weak actualization is Plantinga's concept. We might inductively say that whatever x directly creates is weakly actualized by x, and whatever comes from something weakly actualized by x is weakly actualized by x.