One attribute which does not receive a lot of individual attention, but which is commonly assumed when discussing other attributes, is the idea that God is absolutely and perfectly free. What this means is that there is a total absence of any constraints or force or limitations on God whenever God acts — for God, freedom is absolute.
Thus, for example, when God created the whole of existence, God was not limited by any environmental constraints or material constraints in how God created things. Thus, everything in existence could be slightly different from how it is currently — anyone who claims that God had to make any feature of the universe in the way it currently is also claiming that God was constrained in how things were created.
This is not to say that God could have made an evil world - that would contradict God’s fundamental and absolute goodness. Any constraints which exist for God’s freedom are entirely internal. Thus, for example, God is constrained by various aspects of God’s nature, like being morally good or being a person.
God’s absolute freedom here is more relevant when it comes to non-moral issues — for example, the fact that humans are carbon-based life forms that breathe oxygen. We could have been created as silicon-based life forms that breathe methane. The atomic weights of all of the elements could have been slightly different. Electrons could have been created as positively charged and protons as negatively charged. The very basic structure of existence need not have been made the way it currently is — all could have been different.
God’s absolute freedom also exists on an even more fundamental level. In addition to having been able to create everything different from how it currently is, God had the freedom not to create anything at all. God was not required in any fashion to create existence; instead, creation was a free choice made by God because it fulfilled some desire of God’s.
Although the concept of divine freedom seems to be internally consistent, it isn’t necessarily consistent with other characteristics commonly attributed to God. For example, if God was absolutely free to either create or not create the universe, does that mean that prior to creation God did not know if the universe would exist?
If God didn’t know, then God’s ability to know the future is very limited and perhaps nonexistent - after all, God never knows if it will ever act in any particular way. To use a rather mundane example, God cannot know if a particular tree will fall at a particular time in the future because God doesn’t know if it will cause that tree to fall or not.
On the other hand, if God did know that the universe would exist, and of course there existed no other powers or being that could create the universe, then it was impossible for God not to create the universe. Thus, God’s ability to know the future limits, if not eliminates, God’s freedom. If God knows that it will not cause a particular tree to fall on a particular date, then God is not free to cause that tree to fall and is also not free to ignore the tree.
If any conception of God is to be judged coherent and meaningful, then conflicts between divine freedom and other attributes like omniscience must be resolved — and such a resolution will necessarily be difficult. It is hard to resolve absolute attributes, and God is just full of absolutes which people try to “refine” — but limiting an absolute while keeping it absolute seems to be a exercise in futility.
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