Your discussion of freedom reminds me of some thoughts I have been having lately about freedom and creation. So I was listening to a paper defending God's freedom to create while still remaining purely simple against various analytic objections at a recent conference, and the presenter made the claim that because the world is so non-necessary for God "it is amazing that there is a world at all." Sure, I agree. But I thought you can push the statement the other way and say given that God just is what he is (the Good itself, Self Outpouring Love itself), how could there not be a world (I think Thomas Traherne makes a similar point. One text in Aquinas can also be read this way, Albert too. Seems also to be in Dionysius)? Not that God just dumbly produces the world, but that given what he is, the idea that he might not have created (like how I might just decide to not have a sandwich for lunch) seems to verge on (or just is) voluntarism. To not create seems so inconveniens, as to be completely incompatible with God's nature and therefore, in some sense, not a real possibility. From eternity, it just always was in the cards that he was going to create and this is not a defect of his intellect or power but a perfect expression of who he is, and as you say - the more perfect your understanding, really the less there is to choose. Would appreciate your thoughts!
Actually, I've written on this more times than I can begin to recall. So I'll just quote myself: from YAG:
"All too often, this is obscured in theological discourse by such questions as whether we are obliged to think of creation either as a free act of God’s sovereign will or as a product of some necessity incumbent on his will. But this is a false dilemma. God is not a finite being in whom the distinction of freedom from necessity has any meaning. Perfect freedom is the unhindered realization of a nature in its proper end; and God’s infinite freedom is the eternal fulfillment of the divine nature in the divine life. Needless to say, for any finite rational being, since its essence is not identical with its existence, any movement toward the realization of its nature is attended by the shadows of unrealized possibilities, and entails deliberative liberty with regard to proximate ends. This, though, is a condition not of freedom as such, but only of finitude. Every decision of the finite will is a collapse of indeterminate potentiality into determinate actuality, and therefore the reduction of limitless possibilities to the bare singularity of one reality. Yet that prior realm of possibility exists only because there is an inexhaustible wellspring of more original and transcendent actuality sustaining it. God, by contrast, simply is that actuality, in all its supereminent fullness: infinite Being, the source of every act of being. As such, he is infinitely free precisely because nothing can inhibit or limit the perfect realization of his nature, and thus, as Maximus says, he possesses no gnomic will; for God, deliberative liberty—any “could have been otherwise,” any arbitrary decision among opposed possibilities—would be an impossible defect of his freedom. God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free because he is not some particular determination of Being, some finite reduction of potency to act; he is instead that infinite actuality upon which all ontic possibility depends. And in the calculus of the infinite, any tension between freedom and necessity simply disappears; there is no problem to be resolved because, in regard to the transcendent and infinite fullness of all Being, the distinction is meaningless. God is not a being choosing his nature from among a range of options; he simply is reality as such. And it is only insofar as God is not a being defined by possibility, and is hence infinitely free, that creation inevitably follows from who he is. This in no way alters the truth that creation, in itself, “might not have been,” so long as this claim is understood as a modal definition, a statement of ontological contingency, a recognition that creation receives its being from beyond itself and so has no necessity intrinsic to itself."
Your discussion of freedom reminds me of some thoughts I have been having lately about freedom and creation. So I was listening to a paper defending God's freedom to create while still remaining purely simple against various analytic objections at a recent conference, and the presenter made the claim that because the world is so non-necessary for God "it is amazing that there is a world at all." Sure, I agree. But I thought you can push the statement the other way and say given that God just is what he is (the Good itself, Self Outpouring Love itself), how could there not be a world (I think Thomas Traherne makes a similar point. One text in Aquinas can also be read this way, Albert too. Seems also to be in Dionysius)? Not that God just dumbly produces the world, but that given what he is, the idea that he might not have created (like how I might just decide to not have a sandwich for lunch) seems to verge on (or just is) voluntarism. To not create seems so inconveniens, as to be completely incompatible with God's nature and therefore, in some sense, not a real possibility. From eternity, it just always was in the cards that he was going to create and this is not a defect of his intellect or power but a perfect expression of who he is, and as you say - the more perfect your understanding, really the less there is to choose. Would appreciate your thoughts!
Actually, I've written on this more times than I can begin to recall. So I'll just quote myself: from YAG:
"All too often, this is obscured in theological discourse by such questions as whether we are obliged to think of creation either as a free act of God’s sovereign will or as a product of some necessity incumbent on his will. But this is a false dilemma. God is not a finite being in whom the distinction of freedom from necessity has any meaning. Perfect freedom is the unhindered realization of a nature in its proper end; and God’s infinite freedom is the eternal fulfillment of the divine nature in the divine life. Needless to say, for any finite rational being, since its essence is not identical with its existence, any movement toward the realization of its nature is attended by the shadows of unrealized possibilities, and entails deliberative liberty with regard to proximate ends. This, though, is a condition not of freedom as such, but only of finitude. Every decision of the finite will is a collapse of indeterminate potentiality into determinate actuality, and therefore the reduction of limitless possibilities to the bare singularity of one reality. Yet that prior realm of possibility exists only because there is an inexhaustible wellspring of more original and transcendent actuality sustaining it. God, by contrast, simply is that actuality, in all its supereminent fullness: infinite Being, the source of every act of being. As such, he is infinitely free precisely because nothing can inhibit or limit the perfect realization of his nature, and thus, as Maximus says, he possesses no gnomic will; for God, deliberative liberty—any “could have been otherwise,” any arbitrary decision among opposed possibilities—would be an impossible defect of his freedom. God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free because he is not some particular determination of Being, some finite reduction of potency to act; he is instead that infinite actuality upon which all ontic possibility depends. And in the calculus of the infinite, any tension between freedom and necessity simply disappears; there is no problem to be resolved because, in regard to the transcendent and infinite fullness of all Being, the distinction is meaningless. God is not a being choosing his nature from among a range of options; he simply is reality as such. And it is only insofar as God is not a being defined by possibility, and is hence infinitely free, that creation inevitably follows from who he is. This in no way alters the truth that creation, in itself, “might not have been,” so long as this claim is understood as a modal definition, a statement of ontological contingency, a recognition that creation receives its being from beyond itself and so has no necessity intrinsic to itself."
Well this shows you I have not read YAGs yet. Thanks for this. I can see how Maximus is especially helpful on this issue.