4 Questions around: If God always is what He does and can never be different, how could creating the world have been a real choice rather than something that had to happen?

If God’s act is simple, then how can its content vary across possible worlds?

If nothing in God explains the difference, what grounds the modal claim “God could have done otherwise”?

If the difference lies only outside God, how is His will genuinely different?

First: God is pure act: His will, power, knowledge, and essence are numerically one. That single act is eternally and exhaustively realized as self-diffusive love, Father begetting, Son being begotten, Spirit proceeding. Because relation, not an inert “substance,” is the primitive reality of God, each Person is the whole divine essence under an irreducible relational stance; nothing can be added or taken away. Hence when we say “God created,” we are not positing a new component in God but describing that same act as it freely establishes an outward relation whose real term is the creature. The intrinsic content of the act does not change; only the creature’s dependence makes the new description true.

Thomistic logic secures the point: what is necessary in God is His self-love; what is contingent is whatever He wills apart from Himself. Because omnipotence and omniscience are already fully actual, every possible world lies within God’s active power and intellect; choosing one world over another therefore requires no unrealized potency. The modal claim “God could have done otherwise” is grounded in this limitless power coupled with the absence of any internal compulsion: the divine act is self-sufficient and so indifferently capable of including or omitting creation.

Once the outward relation is distinguished from the inward act, the identity thesis remains intact: God’s act = God in every possible world, while “God is Creator” is contingent on the creature’s existence. No composition arises, no change occurs in God, yet real freedom is preserved because the term of the act-creation-is wholly optional. The Trinity itself proves the coherence of distinction without division: three subsisting relations coexist in absolute simplicity; by analogy, the same simple act can freely include or exclude a creaturely relation.

Thus, the answer in one line: a perfect, triune act of love needs nothing beyond itself, so creating the world is a gratuitous extension of that love, not a necessity, leaving God unchanged while making the world genuinely contingent.

If God’s act is simple, then how can its content vary across possible worlds?

God’s act is simple because it is nothing other than His eternally complete self-diffusive love: Father begetting, Son begotten, Spirit proceeding. Inside this act there are no parts to shuffle and no latent capacities to unfold; it is already fully actual. Yet the act is formally omni-potent—it contains, in God’s intellect and power, every possible creaturely effect it could terminate upon. Selecting one effect rather than another does not splice new content into the act; it merely specifies which external relation—“this world,” “that world,” or none at all—will arise from it.

Scholastic logic captures the move: intrinsically, the act is necessary (necessitas naturae); extrinsically, its term is contingent (necessitas conditionata). In modal terms, across all possible worlds the intrinsic state (God loving God) is identical, while the contingent description “God is Creator of W” toggles with the presence or absence of W, a difference wholly on the creature’s side (a Cambridge change). The act itself remains numerically the same; only its outward orientation varies.

Thus, the simple act can underwrite multiple possible worlds without internal variation because omnipotence supplies limitless active power and no passive potency, so the diversity lies in which relation comes to be, not in any difference within God.

Two-line answer: the content varies only as a freely chosen external relation, leaving the intrinsically simple act, pure triune love, strictly the same in every possible world. Within my own relationally primitive model, God’s actus purus, identical with the triune, subsisting horizons of Giver, Given, and Gift, retains an invariable intra-divine intelligible content across all modal indices, while “variation” arises solely in the extrinsic, denominative relation freely posited by that same omnipotently self-sufficient act, so that the act is numerically identical in every possible world even as its outward terminus differs.

If nothing in God explains the difference, what grounds the modal claim “God could have done otherwise”?

God’s unlimited active power and intellect ground the counterfactual. Because omnipotence is formally identical with the divine essence, it eternally comprehends every creatable order without committing to any; and because God’s will is self-sufficient love, no inner compulsion selects one order over another. Hence the truth-maker for “God could have done otherwise” is simply the ever-actual divine power plus the absence of any necessity that links that power to one particular effect. The modal space is therefore fixed by God’s simple actuality, while the choice among alternatives remains a free, extrinsic determination whose entire difference lies on the creature’s side (Cambridge change), not in God.

Two-line answer:
The possibility that God act otherwise is grounded not in latent potencies but in His always-actual omnipotence, which indifferently enables every possible world. Thus the modal claim is true because God’s power is limitless and unscripted, even though God Himself never changes.

If the difference lies only outside God, how is His will genuinely different?

God’s will is one immutable act whose intentional object can be specified in more than one way: in the actual world that act intends “this creation,” whereas in a non-actual possible world it would intend “no creation.” The distinctness is therefore intentional, not intrinsic: it consists in which creaturely relation the act establishes, not in any new element within the act itself. Because intention is a relation between will and term, altering the term, creation versus none, makes the relation truly different while leaving the willing subject identically the same; scholastic writers call this a “real relation” on the side of the creature and a “relation of reason” in God. Thus, God’s will is genuinely (logically and relationally) different across scenarios, even though its metaphysical content remains numerically one and unchangeable.

God’s one immutable volition remains ontologically identical, yet it is intensionally differentiated by the freely selected terminus ad extra—so the will is “genuinely different” precisely insofar as the same simple act grounds distinct extrinsic relations (creation vs. none), a real variance that resides wholly in the object willed while leaving the act’s intrinsic reality unchanged.

Two-line answer:
The will differs intensionally, by the chosen external term, so the relation it establishes is new even though the willing act in God is the same. Genuine difference rests in the object willed, not in any alteration of the simple divine act.

These 4 questions fall when we see the conclusion to the following argument:

Core axioms

G is a single, primitive, self-subsisting act of being (ipsum esse subsistens), without composition or passive potency.
G’s essence is identical with unlimited active power and self-knowledge; whatever G can effect is comprehended in that one act.
G is already perfectly fulfilled—nothing external can augment or complete this act.

Argument from self-sufficient act to free, contingent creation

What is absolutely self-sufficient cannot be compelled, for compulsion presupposes need or external determination; therefore G’s willing of anything distinct from G is not necessitated by G’s nature.
Because omnipotence and omniscience are identical with G, every creatable order is present virtually in the divine intellect and power; G can realize any of them or none without adding to, subtracting from, or modifying the act.
In an addition-less act, intrinsic difference is impossible, so any variance between “creating” and “not creating” must be found extrinsically, in the relation between G and a possible creature.
Establishing or withholding that relation is a determination of the act’s terminus ad extra; altering a terminus changes the intentional object of the act, not the act’s intrinsic reality.
Such a change is a Cambridge change: real in the creature (it either exists or not), purely denominative in G (no new property arises).
Therefore the modal truth “G could have done otherwise” is grounded in the always-actual omnipotence that indifferently enables every possible terminus, plus the absence of any internal necessity that fixes one in advance.
Once G freely specifies a terminus, that specification is eternally included in the simple act and is necessary ex suppositione; yet the prior choice remains wholly contingent because no intrinsic factor required it.
Hence G’s will is genuinely different across possible worlds only intensionally—by the object willed—while remaining numerically identical in itself.

Conclusion

The same absolutely simple act, already complete in itself, can either include or omit a creaturely term without internal alteration; the difference lies entirely in the contingent relation of creature to Creator. Creation is therefore a real but non-necessary choice, and the identity thesis (act = essence) stands untouched. And the reason these conclusions make the questions fall is because this argument succeeds: by rooting every possibility in the one self-subsisting act while locating all variance solely in an optional extrinsic relation, it shows that (1) creation is a free surplus of a love already complete, (2) the act remains numerically identical across possible worlds, (3) the counterfactual “God could have done otherwise” is cashed out by ever-actual omnipotence unconstrained by need, and (4) the will differs only in the object willed, not in its intrinsic reality. In short, once we acknowledge that the only “change” is a Cambridge change in the creature, each of the four worries collapses and the identity thesis stands inviolate.

Now, the Cambridge change may seem tripe, but there’s a metaphysical backdrop the argument leans on and it goes like this… Ultimate transmundane reality is a single self-subsisting act whose very being is self-giving relation rather than inert substance. Because a pure gift of self is unintelligible without both donor and recipient, that act must simultaneously give, receive-and-return, and bind the two in unity. The least-and therefore simplest-way to satisfy this triple polarity is a triad of intrinsic stances: Giver, Given, and Gift. In each stance the whole act is present, for the relations are not properties of a substratum but the very essence viewed under opposed origins. Thus Father (“from no one”), Son (“from the Father”), and Spirit (“from Father-and-Son”) are really distinct without adding parts or dividing the act. Taking relational orientation as primitive halts any further ontological regress and lets simplicity coexist with plurality. The same indivisible act is identical with boundless power and knowledge, so it grounds the modal truth that God could have done otherwise without appealing to unrealized potentials. Consequently, every difference between worlds lies only in an optional outward relation, a Cambridge change, leaving the intrinsic reality of the triune act numerically identical and immune to modal-collapse worries. In other word, the “just a Cambridge change” line is not just a convenient label but is the natural overflow of a worked-out ontology in which absolute simplicity and maximal freedom coincide in the perfection of triune love.

*Questions inspired by Brian Leftow