God's Nature Requires Generative Creation

This paper argues that God’s nature as truthful, relational, and self‑consistent requires generative creation rather than instantaneous fabrication. Drawing on Augustine’s rationes seminales, Aquinas’s doctrine of secondary causation, and the Eastern Fathers’ vision of participatory becoming, the paper shows that agency, personhood, and moral responsibility are impossible without real history. Persons cannot be fabricated because personhood is relational and emerges through lived development. Instantaneous adult creation would require fabricated memories and false histories, which contradict divine truthfulness. Scripture itself affirms generative unfolding—from creation’s “bringing forth,” to Israel’s formation, to Christ’s own growth in wisdom. The paper concludes that God does not create persons as finished artifacts but forms them through time, relationship, and becoming. Generative creation is therefore not a limitation on divine power but the necessary expression of God’s nature.