Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness – those that take there to be absolute goodness – are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this article we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea.

Thomas Ward explicates and defends a version of divine exemplarism called Containment Exemplarism to make good on the claim that God is a ‘totally original artist’. According to Containment Exemplarism, (i) God ex nihilo creates according to divine ideas, (ii) divine ideas are about an aspect or part of God, and (iii) God has the ideas he has by knowing himself. Containment Exemplarism, we are told, secures the rationality and creativity of the divine creative act. I argue, first, that Ward's God is not a totally original artist since, on Containment Exemplarism, God does not act creatively in creating. Theistic Activism, the view that God makes up the ideas he has, can secure the creativity of the divine creative act. I argue, second, that Ward's argument against the rationality of God making stuff up fails. Thus, there is one version of divine exemplarism that satisfies key desiderata for divine creation.

In the 20th century, some prominent Thomists questioned whether St. Thomas Aquinas is really committed to a theory of divine ideas. There is no doubt that Aquinas articulates such a theory in his Sentences Commentary, Disputed Questions on Truth, and Summa theologiae. Still, he seems to omit an account of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles. If St. Thomas thinks divine ideas are necessary for understanding God's knowledge, why would he skip discussing them in this ex professo work? This paper will argue two points. First, St. Thomas does articulate a theory of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, even though he changes his terminology. His account of divine reasons (rationes) is equivalent to a theory of divine ideas. Second, Aquinas changes his vocabulary because of the more apologetic aim of the work. Use of the term ‘ideas’ would be less effective in dialogue with his Muslim and pagan interlocutors.

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value.