To begin with, I acknowledge that it is impossible for God ever to deceive me, for trickery or deception is always indicative of some imperfection. And although the ability to deceive seems to be an indication of cleverness or power, the will to deceive undoubtedly attests to maliciousness or weakness. Accordingly, deception is incompatible with God.
Meditations 81, A&T 53
We've talked about this as one of the most vital assumptions Descartes makes, but I don't think we've discussed deception in depth. First, for such a critical point, he doesn't seem to spend much time with his proof. I guess I find it interesting that although he is writing this to Christian theologians, he doesn't make any mention of Christ or an explicitly Biblical God in the entire text. I would think that God used "trickery" in the Old Testament - ie. the Binding of Isaac. I also wonder what this says about Descartes moral structure - he seems to not take the consequences into account, but rather the action in itself. My questions are: Does Descartes truly believe that this point is as evident as he claims, or does he spend so little time on it because he knows it is a weak proposition? and This point of God's deception implies a personal God that interacts with the world, and while Descartes states this is a philosophical and not a theological treatise, what insights can we gain into Descartes' theology?
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