Speaking of God’s goodness is a different matter than calling a man “good.” Man cannot simply apply his own set of morals to God and assume that he has comprehensively understood the divine goodness. However, since God is a God who communicates Himself to man by specific revelation, and He requires man to live up to certain qualities because He Himself is similarly bound, there must be a certain degree of commonality between the goodness of God and of man. The goodness of God, therefore, can only be articulated to man analogically to the good that man knows.
Philosophy offers one such natural venue through which man can seek to understand and define the goodness of God. Thomas Aquinas presents such a position in his massive Summa Theologica, outlining what “goodness” means in general as well as in God. He argues that the essence of goodness is that it is desirable in some way. A thing is only desirable, however, in so far as it is perfect. All men desire their own perfection, he continues, which requires in Aristotelian thought complete actuality or being. Being and goodness, therefore, are the same, distinguished only by the fact that goodness expresses the aspect of desirability.
Since being and goodness are the same, all things that possess being are good. However, since man lacks complete being and actuality, he lacks complete goodness and is evil by virtue of this privation. Goodness also implies the aspect of the end, since “desire” entails an end. Since goodness includes the end, it must be first, since what is first in causing is last in the thing caused (e.g. fire which heats all things before producing fire itself).
Goodness, therefore, belongs to God. All beings seek their perfection, which consists in their likeness to the agent that created them. Since God is First Cause, goodness and desirableness must belong to Him. God alone is essentially good since He alone is complete actuality, and His essence is His being. Creation may be called good in that it reflects the divine being and seeks its own perfection. God is the First and the End of Creation, demonstrating His own complete and perfect goodness.
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