Aesthetic Theory of Atonement, Again Again

Brian Leftow ends his 1995 Modern Schoolman article with this:

“Anselm’s appeal to fittingness, then, might serve to undermine the claim the value of efficiency has on God’s choices. For if beauty can trump efficiency, it could be a rational virtue for a perfectly wise being to act inefficiently, if by doing so He created sufficient beauty . . . . There seems no reason at all that another sort of beauty could not trump elegance. If so, elegance need not always be a rational virtue for a perfectly wise agent: it could be a rational virtue, in fact, to favor another sort of beauty over elegance.

“Thus it could be rational for God to choose a plan of salvation whose peculiar beauty attracts Him — whether or not some other plan might realize a greater amount of some other sort of value, or other sort of beauty . . . . Anselm’s ‘fittingness’ arguments turn out to have a surprising importance. If it is rational for God to value beauty, it is rational for Him to seek an elegant plan of salvation — one which procures many goods at a single stroke. Anselm makes a case that He has done so. But it is also rational for God to opt for a salvation-plan whose peculiar beauties appeal to Him.”