502. Anyone, who through false ideas about the spiritual matters of the church has become natural, cannot help thinking of God's omnipotence as being above order, and so of God's omnipotence as having no order. This is why he falls into crazy ideas like these. Why did the Lord come into the world and why did He redeem it like this, when God by His omnipotence could have achieved the same result from heaven as He did upon earth? Why by His redemptive act did He not save the whole human race with no exceptions, and why was the devil afterwards able in the case of a person to overpower the Redeemer? Why is there a hell? Could not God by His omnipotence have wiped it out, and could He not do so now? Or could He not bring everyone out of hell and make them angels in heaven? Why is there a Last Judgment? Could He not move all the goats on the left to the right and make them sheep? Why did He cast down the angels of the dragon and the dragon himself from heaven, and not change them into Michael's angels? Why does He not give both parties faith, imputing to them the righteousness of the Son, and so forgive their sins, justifying and sanctifying them? Why does He not give the animals of the earth, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea the power of speech, together with intelligence, and bring them along with human beings into heaven? Why did He not make, or why does He not still make, the whole earth into a Paradise, where there should be no tree of the knowledge of good and evil, no serpent, and where all the hills were running with fine wines, producing gold and silver, both in nuggets, so that all there might live amid rejoicing and song, in a constant round of festivities and pleasures, like images of God? Would not such things befit an omnipotent God? And much more of the same sort.
But, my friend, this is all nonsense. God's omnipotence is not devoid of order. God Himself is order; and because all things were created from God, they were created from order, in order and with a view to order. The order which man was made to partake in is that his blessing or his cursing should be dependent upon his free will in spiritual matters. For, as I said before, without free will man could not have been created, nor could even animals, birds and fish. But animals enjoy only natural free will; man enjoys natural and spiritual free will as well.
