One Necessary Act & Absolute Sovereignty

Question #10: Is the Catholic assertion (DS 3002, on God’s absolute sovereignty) that God is free to create or not create consistent with the classical-theist idea that in God there is only one, necessary act?

Catholic teaching, particularly evident in DS 3002, affirms that God’s sovereignty includes the genuine freedom to create or not create. Meanwhile, classical theism insists that in God there is only one, necessary act–He is actus purus, with no possibility of transitioning from one state of will to another. The question arises: how can God’s freedom (He can “do otherwise”) be reconciled with a single, unchanging, and necessary act in God?

1. Distinguishing “Necessary” in God from “Necessary” Effects

When classical theists refer to God’s act as “necessary,” they mean that it is identical with God’s essence–no composition or parts exist in Him. God cannot be partly “willing” and partly “not willing,” as that would imply internal division. Therefore, His will is as necessary as His being, since He is utterly simple. However, this necessity pertains only to God’s own mode of being, not to the specific content of His willing. For instance, He necessarily wills Himself–the perfect Good–but He does not necessarily will this or that creation. The effect (creation) is genuinely contingent, because God was not obliged or compelled to will it.

2. One Eternal Act with Contingent Scope

Classical theism also recognizes that God’s one act spans all that He wills from eternity. While the act is single and eternal, it includes a freely determined subset of possible outcomes–He “could have” chosen any number of worlds to bring about or none at all. The “necessity” here does not force a particular world’s creation; it only emphasizes that God Himself does not undergo change or division in choosing. Thus, from our vantage point, we rightly speak of His freedom to create or not create (DS 3002), whereas from God’s vantage point, there is just one, unchanging decree.

3. Freedom Flows from God’s Self-Sufficiency

Because God is absolute sovereignty (DS 3002), He depends on nothing external and has no deficiency internally. This self-sufficiency grounds His freedom: He is under no compulsion to fulfill any lack. His one eternal act of will arises solely from His sovereign goodness. Consequently, it is free. If the world existed necessarily, then God would not be free–He would be obligated to create. But Catholic teaching denies this, affirming creation’s full contingency.

4. No Temporal Sequence in God

Lastly, the fact that God’s act is one and eternal avoids any suggestion that God first “mulls over” options and then “settles” on creation, which would imply a change in God over time. Instead, the single, eternal act already contains every divine choice–nothing else is added later. For us, it unfolds in time as contingent events; for God, it is simply His undivided, timeless decree.

Hence, the Catholic assertion of God’s absolute sovereignty and free choice to create (or not) remains fully consistent with the classical-theist principle that God’s act is one and necessary in itself. The necessity refers to God’s way of being–not to the world’s resulting existence.


(see #6, #7 for more)