This is exactly the problem I have with the idea of God having free will. It is defended by saying that God cannot choose evil, but can choose from a number of possible worlds to create, or to not create at all.
Of course, I think that for God to not create would be evil, since evil is an absence, and good is a presence. Therefore choosing to not create the world seems like an impossibility according to the nature of God.
And then there is the trouble of infinite and perfect good creating an imperfectly good world.
Love is necessarily creative. I see no other way of looking at it since all that which is analogous to the good are potencies waiting to be actualized and it would not be identical to the nature of love to not at least allow the possibility of their actualization. Perhaps we are seeing this played out in quantum events.
It really depends on context. In one context God does not have to create the universe in the sense that universe does not necessarily exist and therefore cannot cause God to create. In another context, at least in the context of God being love, it is God’s nature to share existence for that is what love does and cannot be conceived as a choice in the human sense of the word.
As far as your last sentence is concerned, I find it hard to conceive of God creating a world that does not “
evolve-naturally” (
which will probably result in the manifestation of imperfections as we see it) since no part of the universe including humanity has a particular
right to exist over other potential things precisely because everything that is not God is contingent upon God to exist, and love favors no one. Love is not
prejudiced. I don’t think there is a
hierarchy of rights to exists; thus even the most imperfect thing like a virus has a potential to be real. The only rights we have over the virus is our capacity to have a relationship with God.
Our potency is to be shepherds over creation, but we don’t have a natural right to exist over the existence of other forms of creation. This is to say that our existence doesn’t mean that other forms of existence dangerous or otherwise are not allowed to become actual. However perhaps the potency of the universe is as such that somethings are likely to become actual more than others. This is to say that physical law keeps a balance in terms of what is possible and acts as a kind of safe guard over total chaos.
