  Morris believes that God can be the cause of his own nature. By this he means that God is both the cause of the properties (omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect goodness) and the cause of God's having those properties. Indeed, Morris holds that God is the cause of all the elements constituting the framework of reality. Furthermore, Morris is well aware that God has no control over either his causing the divine properties or his having those properties. The primary sense in which we say that an agent is free in doing something requires that at the time he did it the agent could have avoided doing what he did or could have avoided causing his decision to do that thing. It is this sense of having control that many philosophers hold to be essential if an agent is to be morally responsible for his decision and action. [I ignore here cases of “derivative responsibility,” where an agent freely and knowingly causes himself to be in a situation where he is caused to will to do X and cannot refrain from willing to do X. In such cases the agent can be said, in a derivative sense, to be morally responsible for what he now must do, for the agent freely put himself in circumstances that he knew would necessitate his act.]  And it is because God is not free (in the sense required for moral responsibility) when he performs actions necessitated by his absolute perfections that it makes no sense to thank God or praise him for doing those actions. It is true, however, as Morris points out, that God's having no choice either about creating the framework of reality or about having the properties of absolute power, knowledge, and goodness, does not result from something else imposing this framework and properties upon him. And this seems to distinguish God from the leaf that has no choice about moving when the wind blows. The necessity of the leaf's moving is imposed on it by something else (the wind). The necessity of God's doing what is best is imposed by God's nature, his being perfectly good, something that is internal to God and something that, on Morris's account, God himself causes, but had no choice about causing. So, unlike the leaf's being caused to move by something else (the wind), God, we may say, necessarily does what is best because given his perfect nature he cannot do other than the best. And although God causes his eternal possession of his perfect nature he had no choice about eternally causing himself to be perfect. Consider the question: Does God have any more of a choice about doing what is best than the leaf, were it endowed with consciousness, would have about moving when the wind blows? It is apparent that the answer must be “No.” For each necessarily does what it does as a result of factors over which neither has any control. And that being so, it may be that God is no more morally responsible for choosing to do what is best than the leaf is for moving when the wind blows. But even it this should be so, the view Morris presents is a significant addition to the literature on the problem of divine freedom.