they do many things that are against his will. Because even when they do what
SERMON 214 151 be defended against people who think differently, having been taken prisoner by the devil; people who set traps for your faith in their opposition to your salvation. So remember that you believe that God is so almighty that there is absolutely no nature which he did not create.5 And that's why he punishes sin, which he didn't make, because it befouls nature, which he did make.
So all visible and invisible creatures, anything that having a rational mind can partake of unchangeable truth, like angels and human beings; anything that lives and senses, though it lacks intelligence, as are all animals on the land, in the waters, in the air, walking, crawling, swimming, flying; anything that with¬ out intelligence, without sensation, is said in any way to live, such as the things that are fixed in the earth with roots, and bud forth and break out and grow up into the fresh air; anything that just occupies space by its mere bulk like a stone, and whatever elements of the world's mass can be perceived or even touched;6 all these things the Almighty has made, joining the highest and the lowest by the ones in the middle,7 and arranging all that he has created in appropriate places and times.
But he didn't make them out of some material which he hadn't made himself. He did not, you see, form something belonging to someone else, but himself set up what he would form. People, I mean, who say that he couldn't make anything out of nothing—well, how can they believe that the maker of it is almighty? They are undoubtedly denying he is almighty, if they say that God couldn't have made the world if he hadn't had something to make it out of. After all, what sort of omnipotence would it be, if he were so dependent, that like a craftsman he could not put his work into effect without the provision of some material he had not set up himself? These are the sorts of opinions and errors, then, from which you must purge your minds if you believe in an almighty God.
You see, what is called the formless matter of things, being receptive of forms and subject to the action of the creator, is convertible into all the things the creator may be pleased to make. God didn't find it, like something co-etemal with himself, out of which to construct the world; but he himself set it up from absolutely nothing, together with the things he made out of it; nor was it there before the things that appear to have been made out of it. And thus the Almighty made all things in the beginning out of nothing, and with them simultaneously made what they are made of. And so the material of heaven and earth, just as these were created in the beginning (Gn 1:1), was simultaneously co-created with them. And there wasn't anything there out of which could be made what God made in the beginning; and yet everything the Almighty made was made, and once made he put it all together, filled it all, furnished it all. You see, if he definitely made out of nothing what he made in the beginning, he is also capable of making whatever he wishes out of the things he has made, because he is almighty.8
God knows how to make good use of the bad
3. The wicked have no reason to believe that God is not almighty, just because they do many things that are against his will. Because even when they do what