Obviously, God cannot have an explanation of His existence which is external to Him, Christina, for then He would depend for His existence on whatever thing it is that explains His existence, which is incompatible with God’s being the ultimate reality. So the explanation of God’s existence must be internal to Him, that is to say, God exists by a necessity of His own nature. He is a metaphysically necessary being, a being whose nature is such that if He is possible, then He exists.
So we should not say that God chose to exist or to have the essential properties He does. As you discern, that would be viciously circular, since in order to choose to exist, He would already have to exist! If, on the other hand, saying that God exists by a necessity of His own nature “seems to contradict His absolute freedom,” there is no theological reason to affirm that God has the freedom to act contrary to His own nature. On the contrary, Christian theologians have typically asserted that God does not have the freedom (we may be thankful!) to act contrary to His nature. So the absolute freedom of which you speak is a chimaera, which we ought to reject.
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