Abstract

This paper defends Gödel’s axiom that necessary existence is a positive property by grounding it in the classical doctrine of evil as privation and in a modal-ontological analysis of perfection. Drawing on Augustine’s conception of evil as the absence of good and Aquinas’s account of the Necessary Being, the argument shows that privation can only be intelligible if the corresponding perfection exists—or has existed—in every possible world. From this, it follows that necessity always points toward the good, remaining untouched by any form of deprivation. Necessity therefore emerges as the supreme positive property and the highest mode of being. Rather than beginning with the premise that “God is possible,” the argument starts from the metaphysical fact that necessity itself exists in all possible worlds and must be instantiated by a being. As necessity functions as an ontological compass directing all perfections toward their maximal expression, the entity bearing necessary existence is thereby identified as the Supreme Being. Thus, necessary existence alone is sufficient to characterize God as the Supreme Being.