The problem with your statement is that God by definition according to Catholicism, has no potential. Being a “perfect” what ever God is cannot enact a potential without changing the perfection he is in some manner.
Interesting comment. On the above, God creates from eternity, not in time. So, there’s no before and after - thus, no change in perfection. His idea, action and will are united as one.
Anything God can do has been done in his perfection since God is not subject to time. There is no…“I think I’ll make something today.”…to God. Today is tomorrow is yesterday for God. Do you agree with this?
Yes
You must qualify what you mean by “create”. Men create all the time…things which do not nor have ever existed in the natural world. If mankind comes along and creates a new material which has never before seen properties and does not exist in the natural world haven’t they created something which did not exist prior to their creating it? This type of creation is not ex nihilo since the materials used in its creation already existed and this would be the primary difference between men and God when creating. However, what about the idea of the thing, where did the idea of the creation of the thing come from? Humans or God?
Both. It came from the person, who created the idea. But the person came from God, who created that human being.
It can be said that the idea of the thing is already existing in God and therefore was not brought about ex nihilo in the mind of man but can bringing the idea of the thing together with its actualization within the natural world be considered an ex nihilo conceptualization by humans?
Well, the idea itself is an actualization of potentiality within the human. It comes from the human mind, so not really ex nihilo. We could say “it comes from the human’s being, just God does with ideas” - and that is true, except that the human mind is created, not eternal.
Did humans create the uniqueness within the natural world ex nihilo like creating a so called free will choice ex nihilo? Since mankind’s free will choice to act must be ex nihilo from the chooser or else the act of the will is not actually free. God may sustain the choice but the choice must be made ex nihilo by the free will. This brings up the question of where our ideas come from. Do they come from our selves ex nihilo as our own or from God.
Ok, but even still - no matter how you answer that, the human being is contingent. The human is not pure act, but rather, is potentiality needed to be actualized by that which preceeds it, in this case, God. So, we could say that God creates all human acts and ideas because God created each human soul. However, because of free will, the human can create from his own being, but it’s not ex nihilo. When God creates, it is from no pre-existing entity. The difficulty is understanding that His creation is not an actualization of potentiality, but an expression of His wholeness of being. He is not changed by creation,
Where does our will come from then? From where does the next sentence we will speak to our friends come from? Are they already there somewhere in the mind waiting for our souls to bring them forth into our conscious awareness to use?
We generate ideas freely - drawing together experriences and knowledge and arriving at conclusions that did not exist before. But it’s the same as building a house. The house didn’t exist before, but the wood and materials did. It’s the same with an idea, but instead of wood and materials, we have our own immaterial, spiritual processes that create the idea.
Surely if our thoughts are not our own then neither can it be said that our will is. If our will originates within God then we can never be truly free and thus no thing can truly be created ex nihilo by an imperfect thing. I wonder? Do you think this could be true?
We would say that our free will is our own and not determined directly by God. We are free to make choices and to create things that did not exist before. But the only way we can do that is to actualize potential - using that which pre-exists.
