Saturday, July 01, 2006

Q25 A5: Whether God can do what He does not?

Yes. God can do other things than those He has done because the divine goodness is an end exceeding beyond all proportion things created and thus the divine wisdom is not so restricted to any particular order that no other course of events could happen.

God can do other things by His absolute power than those He has foreknown and pre-ordained He would do. But it could not happen that He should do anything which He had not foreknown, and had not pre-ordained that He would do, because His actual doing is subject to His foreknowledge and pre-ordination, though His power, which is His nature, is not so. For God does things because He wills so to do; yet the power to do them does not come from His will, but from His nature.