Here, again, we continue to pursue necessary implications of our primary qualification. If this god-being has no dependency upon outside agencies he will have to be complete in his own right. There can be nothing such a being lacks, for that lack would create a dependency on some outside agency to supply the lack. There can be no excess, for any such excess would create a dependency upon some outside agency to take the overflow. In short, for this god-being to be utterly independent, by definition, he can have no needs. Nothing such a being does is from any necessity imposed by circumstance.
I wish to be particularly careful at this juncture. This is not to say that such a god-being never acts of necessity. Indeed, I suspect it could be argued that such a god-being does EVERY act of necessity. But, that necessity is internal to the god-being. It is rendered necessary by the being’s own character and will, not by the imposition of any outside influence. In one sense, then, I will insist that there are things even such a god-being cannot do, but only in a sense. I could suggest, for example, that such a being could not act to terminate his own existence. For one thing, that would violate the necessary eternality of his being, which would then disqualify him as being a god-being, and the whole business would collapse. But, in a more literal sense, I should have to hold that yes, he actually could do so. His unanswerable power demands that he could do so. But, as nothing exists to coerce him into taking such an action, it is impossible that he would do so. Thus, I am comfortable using a mental shorthand of a sort and saying simply that he could not do so.
