How Is God Free to Create When He Has No Unactualized Potential?

Question #1: In light of Catholic teaching on God as actus purus (cf. CCC 268–271) and Creator of all things, how can God be genuinely free to create or not create when He has no unactualized potential?


A concise way to put it is this:

1. God’s Actus Purus means no internal necessity compels Him to create.

Being “pure act” does not mean God is forced to do anything by some unrealized potential; rather, it means God’s being is already fully realized–He does not stand in need of anything else (creation included). So if God creates, He does so freely, not out of lack or “unfulfilled potency.”

2. No change or “new act” arises in God when He freely wills creation.

In classical Catholic thought, the difference between “God creating” and “God not creating” exists on creation’s side, not on God’s side. God’s eternal, unchanging will includes His free decision–without thereby introducing any unrealized potential within Him. The choice to create is not a transition from “could create” to “is creating” in God, because from all eternity He wills freely what He wills.

3. Freedom does not require a prior state of “non-action.”

Unlike creatures–where we deliberate, move from uncertainty to resolution, and “actualize” previously unrealized capacities–God does not undergo any temporal or internal shift. He has no journey from possibility to act. Instead, His willing is eternally self-possessed yet truly free, because nothing compels His will from outside or within.

4. His will is the sufficient explanation, not a prior potency.

Catholic doctrine (cf. Catechism §§268–271) states God is omnipotent and almighty, yet never constrained. That omnipotence extends to the power not to create. He could have not willed a world; indeed, the world adds nothing to His perfect beatitude. In that sense, God’s “I can create or refrain” is not a dormant possibility inside Him, but a facet of His eternal omnipotence and freedom.



Putting these together: God’s lack of unrealized potential does not mean He “must” create; on the contrary, it is because nothing drives Him (no “deficiency,” no compulsion) that His act of creation is the fullest expression of purely free love. That is how God can be Actus Purus and at the same time genuinely free to create or not create.

(see #2, #3 for more)