ARTICLE I

The Question Is about God's Will, and in the First Article We Ask: DOES IT BELONG TO GOD TO HAVE A WILL?

Difficulties:

It seems that it does not, for

1. It belongs to everyone who has a will to act according to the choice of his will. But God does not act according to the choice of His will; for, as Dionysius says, just as our visible sun enlightens all things, not by reasoning or choosing, but by its very being, so too does the divine goodness. It therefore does not belong to God to have a will.

2. Necessary effects cannot come from a contingent cause. But the will is a contingent cause, since it is open to alternatives. It cannot, then, be the cause of necessary things. But God is the cause of all things, necessary as well as contingent. He therefore does not act through a will, and so the conclusion is the same as before.

3. Nothing which implies a reference to a cause belongs to that which has no cause. But since God is the first cause of all things, He has no cause. Now a will implies a relationship to a final cause, because the will is referred to an end, as the Philosopher says. It therefore seems that will does not pertain to God.

4. According to the Philosopher, what is voluntary deserves praise or blame; what is involuntary deserves pardon and mercy. Voluntariness therefore does not belong to anything to which praiseworthiness does not belong. But praiseworthiness does not belong to God because, as is said in the Ethics, "praise is not for the best," but for those things which are directed to the best. Honor is for the best. It therefore does not belong to God to have a will.

5. Opposites have reference to the same thing. But two species of the involuntary are opposed to the voluntary, as is said in the Ethics: the involuntary "from violence" and the involuntary "from ignorance." Now nothing involuntary from violence is attributable to God because force cannot be applied to Him; nor is anything involuntary from ignorance, because He knows everything. Then neither is anything voluntary attributable to God.

6. As is said in The Rules of Faith, there are two kinds of will: affective, regarding internal acts, and effective, regarding external acts. Affective will works for merit, as is said there; effective will achieves merit. But it does not belong to God to merit. Then neither does it belong to Him in any way to have a will.

7. God is an unmoved mover because, in the words of Boethius, "while remaining immobile He communicates motion to all things." But a will is a moved mover, as is said in The Soul. Hence the Philosopher likewise argues from the principle that God is an unmoved mover to show that He moves only by being desired and known. It therefore does not belong to God to have a will.

8. Will is a sort of appetite, for it is included in the appetitive part of the soul. But appetite is an imperfection, since it is directed to what is not had, as Augustine points out. Since no imperfection is found in God, it therefore seems that it does not belong to Him to have a will.

9. Nothing that has reference to opposites seems to belong to God, since things having such reference are subject to generation and corruption. But God is far removed from these. Now the will has reference to opposites, since it is numbered among the rational powers, and these are open to opposite determinations according to the Philosopher. Will is therefore not attributable to God.

10. Augustine says that God is not disposed in one way to things when they are and in another when they are not. But when they are not, God does not want things to be; for, if He willed them to be, they would be. Therefore even when they are, God does not will them to be.

11. It is compatible with God to perfect but not to be perfected. It belongs to the will, however, to be perfected by good, as to the intellect to be perfected by truth. Will is therefore not compatible with God.

To the Contrary:

1'. In one of the Psalms (113:3) it is said that the Lord "hath done all things whatsoever he would." From this it appears that He has a will and that created things exist by His will.

2'. Happiness is found most perfectly in God. But happiness demands will, because according to Augustine a happy person is one "who has whatever he wishes and wishes no evil." Will therefore belongs to God.

3'. Wherever more perfect conditions for willing are found, will exists in a more perfect way. But in God the conditions for willing are found most perfectly. In Him there is no separation of the will from its subject, because His essence is His will. There is no separation of the will from its act, because His action also is His essence. There is no separation of the will from the end, its object, because His will is His goodness. Therefore will is found most perfectly in God.

4'. Will is the root of freedom. But freedom belongs especially to God. In the words of the Philosopher, "a free person is one who is for his own sake," and this is most true of God. Will is therefore found in God.

REPLY:

Will is most properly found in God. In support of this it should be noted that knowledge and will in a spiritual substance are founded upon its different relations to things. There is one relation of a spiritual substance to things according as the things are in some sense within the spiritual substance itself, not indeed in their own existence, as the ancients held, saying that by earth we know earth and by water, water, etc., but in their distinctive intelligible design. "For a stone is not in the soul, but its species is" (that is, its intelligible design), as the Philosopher taught. Because the intelligible design of a being cannot be found by itself without a subject except in an immaterial substance, knowledge is not attributed to all things but only to immaterial beings. And the degree of knowledge parallels the degree of immateriality so that the things which are most immaterial are most capable of knowledge. Because their essence is immaterial, it serves them as a medium for knowing. Through His essence God knows Himself and all other things. Will, however, and any appetite is based upon the relation by which a spiritual substance is oriented to things as existing in themselves.

Inasmuch as it is characteristic of any being, whether material or immaterial, to have some reference to something else, it accordingly follows that it pertains to everything whatever to have an appetite, natural or animal or rational (that is, intellectual); but in different beings it is found in different ways. Since a thing has its reference to another being through something which it has within itself, its different ways of being referred to another correspond to the different ways in which it has something within itself.

Whatever is in material things is in them as bound up and compounded with matter. The reference of material beings to other things is accordingly not free but dependent upon the necessity of a natural disposition. Material beings are therefore not the cause of their own reference as if they directed themselves to the end to which they are in fact directed. They receive that direction from elsewhere, namely, the source from which they get their natural disposition. They are consequently able to have only a natural appetite.

In immaterial and knowing substances, on the other hand, there is found something in the pure state and not compounded or tied up with matter. This is proportioned to the degree of their immateriality. By this very fact, too, they are referred to things by a free reference of which they are the cause, directing themselves to that to which they are referred. It is accordingly their lot to do or seek something voluntarily and of their own accord. If the house in the mind of the builder were a material form having a determinate act of being, it would incline him only in accordance with its own determinate mode of existence. Hence the builder would not remain free to make the house or not, or to make it in this way or in some other. But because the form of the house in the mind of the builder is the plan of the house taken absolutely, of itself not disposed any more to existence than to non-existence or to existence in one particular way rather than in another as far as the accidental features of the house go, the builder's inclination in regard to making the house or not remains free.

In the case of a sentient spiritual substance, however, the forms, though received without matter, are nevertheless, as a consequence of their being received in a bodily organ, not received altogether immaterially and without the conditions of matter. Their inclination is for this reason not altogether free, though they have a certain imitation or semblance of freedom. They incline appetitively to something by themselves inasmuch as they desire something as a result of their apprehension; but it does not lie within their competence to incline or not to incline to that which they desire. But in an intellectual nature, in which something is received altogether immaterially, the essence of a free inclination is found perfectly verified. And this free inclination is what constitutes the essential character of will.

Will is accordingly not attributed to material things, though natural appetite is. To a sensitive soul there is attributed not will but animal appetite. Only to an intellectual substance is will attributed; and the more immaterial this substance is, the more the essence of will belongs to it. Consequently, since God is at the extreme of immateriality, the essential character of will supremely and most properly belongs to Him.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. By the words cited Dionysius does not mean to exclude will and choice from God but to show His universal influence upon things. God does not communicate His goodness to things in such a way that He chooses certain ones to receive a share in His goodness and excludes others completely from a share in it; but He "giveth to all . . . abundantly," as is said in the Epistle of St. James (1:5). He is, however, said to choose in this respect, that in the order of His wisdom he gives more to some than to others.

2. The will of God is not a contingent cause, inasmuch as what He wills He wills immutably. By reason of its very immutability necessary things can be caused. This is of particular importance since of itself no created thing is necessary but is possible in itself and necessary through something else.

3. The will is directed to something in two ways: (1) principally, and (2) secondarily. Principally the will is directed to the end, which is the reason for willing everything else. Secondarily it is directed to the means, which we want for the sake of the end. Now the will does not stand in a relationship of an effect to a cause in regard to its secondary object, but only in regard to its principal object, the end. It should be noticed, however, that the will and its object are sometimes really distinct, and in that case the object is related to the will as its real final cause. But if the will and its object are only conceptually distinct, the object will then not be the final cause of the will except according to our way of expressing it.

The divine will is accordingly referred to God's goodness as to an end, whereas the two are really identical. They are distinguished only in our manner of speaking. There accordingly remains only the conclusion that nothing is really the cause of the divine will, but it is a cause only in our manner of designating it. Nor is it out of place for something to be designated after the manner of a cause in regard to God. It is in this way for instance, that deity is spoken of as if it were related to God as His formal cause.

The created things which God wills, however, are not related to the divine will as ends but as directed to an end. God wills creatures to exist in order that His goodness may be manifested in them, and that His goodness, which in its essence cannot be multiplied, may be poured out upon many at least by a participation through likeness.

4. If praise is taken strictly, as the Philosopher takes it, it is not due to the will in every one of its acts but only in that in which the will regards the means to an end. It is clear that an act of the will is found not only in virtuous deeds, which are praiseworthy, but also in the act of happiness, which is concerned with honorable things; for happiness obviously involves pleasure. And yet praise is attributed to God too, since we are invited in many places in Holy Scripture to praise God. But in this case praise is taken more broadly than the Philosopher takes it.--Or it can be said that praise, even in its proper sense, is attributable to God in so far as by His will He directs creatures to Himself as their end.

5. [This answer is lacking.]

6. There is in God both affective and effective will, for He wills to will and He wills to do what He does. But it is not necessary that, wherever there is either one of these types of will, merit be found, but only in an imperfect nature which is tending to perfection.

7. When the object of the will is distinct from the will itself, the object really moves the will. But when it is identical with the will, then it moves it only in our way of speaking. And in regard to this way of speaking, in the opinion of the Commentator there is verified the saying of Plato that the first mover moves itself inasmuch as it understands and wills itself. Nor does it follow from the fact that God wills creatures to be that He is moved by creatures, because He does not will the creatures except by reason of His own goodness, as has been said.

8. It is by one and the same nature that a thing both moves toward a term which it does not yet possess and reposes in a term which it has already come to possess. It is accordingly the function of one and the same power to tend to a good when it is not yet had, and to love it and take pleasure in it after it is had. Both belong to the appetitive power, though it gets its name rather from that act by which it tends to what it does not have. That is why appetite is said to belong to what is imperfect. But will is equally applicable to both. Hence will in its proper meaning is attributable to God, but not appetite.

9. It is not compatible with God to have reference to opposites as regards the things that are in His essence; but He can have opposite dispositions as regards His effects in creatures, which He can produce or not.

10. Even when God is not producing things, He wants things to be; but He does not want them to be at that time. The argument accordingly proceeds from a false supposition.

11. God cannot really be perfected by anything; yet in our manner of expressing it He is sometimes referred to as being perfected by something; for example, when I say that God understands something. The intelligible object is the perfection of the intellect just as the willed object is the perfection of the will. In God, however, the first intelligible object and the intellect are identical, and also the first object willed and the will.