He is omniscient , for in knowing himself as Cause He knows all creature things and events by implication. His knowledge is previsive , for He is present to all time. Even our free acts are known beforehand to Him, for otherwise his wisdom would admit of successive moments of enrichment, and this would contradict his immutability. He is omnipotent for everything that does not involve logical contradiction. He can make being —in other words his power includes creation . If what He creates were made of his own substance, it would have to be infinite in essence, as that substance is; but it is finite; so it must be non-divine in substance. If it were made of a substance, an eternally existing matter, for example, which God found there to his hand, and to which He simply gave its form, that would contradict God’s definition as First Cause, and make Him a mere mover of something caused already. The things he creates, then, He creates ex nihilo , and gives them absolute being as so many finite substances additional to himself. The forms which he imprints upon them have their prototypes in his ideas. But as in God there is no such thing as multiplicity, and as these ideas for us are manifold, we must distinguish the ideas as they are in God and the way in which our minds externally imitate them. We must attribute them to Him only in a terminative sense, as differing aspects, from the finite point of view, of his unique essence.
God of course is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil, for He is positive being’s fullness, and evil is negation. It is true that He has created physical evil in places, but only as a means of wider good, for bonum totius praeminet bonum partis . Moral evil He cannot will, either as end or means, for that would contradict his holiness. By creating free beings He permits it only, neither his justice nor his goodness obliging Him to prevent the recipients of freedom from misusing the gift.
As regards God’s purpose in creating, primarily it can only have been to exercise his absolute freedom by the manifestation to others of his glory.