This essay considers the goodness of God and the psalmists’ gratitude toward God in connection with divine aseity and divine freedom. The plenitude of God's goodness entails that he is fully sufficient and actualised in himself. The psalmists’ gratitude toward God implies that he acts in freedom when he communicates his goodness to creatures. The essay then explores how contemplating this teaching in the Psalter can help us to articulate in a broader dogmatic scope the coherence of God's pure actuality, freedom and constancy.

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the virgin birth claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary's impregnation was fully consensual (virgin consent), and God never acts immorally (divine goodness). First, I show that God's actions and Mary's background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary's comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God's non-disclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary's informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue virgin consent fails. As divine goodness and virgin consent are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject virgin birth.