Actus Purus, Freedom, & No Latent Potential

Question #22: How does Catholic theology, especially Aquinas’s concept of actus purus, reconcile God’s pure actuality with the freedom to create, thereby preserving divine simplicity (CCC 295–296) without introducing unrealized potentials into God?

Catholic theology (as I understand it), drawing significantly on Aquinas’s concept of actus purus, teaches that God is pure actuality–He has no unrealized potentials or “parts” that could be activated. This leads to a question: If God is already “fully actual,” how can He freely do anything other than what He does, including creating a contingent universe? Wouldn’t freedom imply unrealized possibilities in God’s being? Aquinas and subsequent Catholic tradition provide a nuanced explanation:

1. God’s Immutability and Freedom

According to Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I.19), God is immutable and without any internal movement from potency to act. Yet He is also free in His creative decision: God could have not created at all, or could have willed a different universe, without any change in His essence. Freedom in God does not mean He deliberates through potentials but that no necessity–internal or external–compels Him.

• No Internal Deficiency: Because God’s essence is infinitely full, He lacks nothing that would obligate Him to create.

• No External Constraint: Nothing outside God can force His hand. He chooses from His own self-sufficiency.

2. Distinguishing God’s Eternal Act from Temporal Effects

Aquinas insists God’s creative will is a single, eternal act–identical to His essence–rather than a “change” from not-creating to creating. God’s “decision” is not a time-bound shift from potency to act (as in human choices), but an eternal, timeless expression. Creation’s contingency lies in the creaturely domain: the world “might not have been,” if God had willed otherwise. Yet from God’s eternal vantage point, He simply and freely wills the world’s existence without any internal mutation.

3. No Unrealized Potentials

Because God’s freedom is not predicated on having “latent capacities,” God’s non-creation scenario exists purely as a non-necessity on the creature’s side, not as an unactivated potency in God. The classical maxim is that God would remain perfectly God whether or not creation existed. God’s act is wholly actual–there is no partial or emergent aspect that becomes “activated” when He decides to create.

4. Divine Simplicity Preserved

Catholic teaching (CCC 295–296) emphasizes that the world is created freely “out of nothing.” God’s decision adds no complexity to Him; there is no partition between “essence” and “creative will.” For Aquinas, the distinction arises strictly in the order of effects–the created universe depends on God, not the other way around. Thus, God’s pure actuality remains unthreatened: no part of Him “waits” to be actualized. He is simply and eternally who He is, and that one, simple eternal act includes His free, uncoerced choice of creation.

By framing God’s freedom as a function of His infinite self-sufficiency rather than unrealized potency, Catholic theology upholds divine simplicity. God freely creates, but without any process of “activating potential.” Therefore, actus purus and free creation coexist in perfect harmony.

(see #3, #21)