Descartes' Constant Image of God

In Meditation 3 of Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, he proposes that he received the idea of God by its being innate in him. It didn’t come from his senses, which is good since the senses deceive us, but it isn’t from his own creation either, “for I plainly can neither subtract anything from it nor add anything to it. Thus, the only option remaining is that this idea is innate in me” (121). Descartes says that he cannot change or modify the image of God that he has whatsoever, and this is his reasoning for believing that God has to exist in order to instill that idea in him.

However, people distort the idea of God all the time. For Christians who believe in God, some of them emphasize the loving, nurturing, fatherly figure of God, while others accentuate the judge role of God who is focused on justice and vengeance. In the Christian tradition, scripture can support both of these images. People who believe in God clearly can add and subtract parts of him that they like and don’t like. So, I think that this aspect of Descartes’ argument for the existence of God is a bit unsound.