Leila asked:

Can God make a world He cannot control?

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I suppose my answer would take the form of a question: why would He wish to make a world He can
control? He does not control this one!! What is observable as 'universe' at the moment (prescinding
from whether it is infinitely expanding and if Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is applicable in the
light of cosmological discoveries today) is what happens when God creates. It is not the 'best of all
possible worlds' of Plato's Demiurge in the Timaeus. This is God's creative activity visible to us, and
which is there for us to interpret whether we use the rules of physics, relativity, complexity
consciousness, theology, philosophy or any other 'osophy' which may assist us in interpreting the
meaning of the universe in which we live. God creates the universe with its own freedoms, laws,
physics. Science discovers nothing new in the strict sense — only that which was always present in
its own reality with the potential to be 'dis-covered'. What science does is to illuminate what is already
present and explain its rationality.

Given that, and the fact that God does not control this world, He cannot make a world He could not
control for the simple reason he cannot act contrary to His own nature. Since God is freedom,
predicated as an absolute — then He cannot act contrary to that freedom (since potency and act in
God are the same). Thus, God has no reason to make a world He could not control a) because He
would not wish to make such a world b) because this universe is already existent as the act of God
expressed through the freedom of its own origins c) God cannot act contrary to his existent nature to
do so would render Him contrary and contrariness in God is non-existence. Thus He cannot be the
author of His own non-existence.

Fr Seamus Mulholland OFM