Book I, Chapter 10

CHAPTER X. That the divine will is universally efficacious, insuperable, and necessary in causing, and can in no way be hindered or frustrated.

It now remains to show, as a consequence, that the divine will is universally efficacious, insuperable, and necessary in causing, and can in no way be hindered or frustrated. All of this is evidently known from the eighth part of the first Corollary of this book; but here, for good reason, it is to be confirmed by some arguments and authorities. Who, then, would not know that this is an excellent consequence: if God can do something and wills to do it, he does it, or will do it at the appointed time, so long as power and will remain? For nothing required for the doing is lacking to him. C1 The Philosopher also says in Metaphysics 9, 10 that everything which has power according to reason must, when it desires that of which it has the power, and as it has it, do this;1 and in Rhetoric 2, 24: "If he could and wished, he acted"; for all, when they are able and wish, act. And in Politics 5, 7: "What the powerful wish, all of them accomplish." Hence, as the Philosopher teaches in Prior Analytics 1, from the opposite of the conclusion with the same minor premise, inferring the opposite of the former major, this follows excellently by conversion: "God does not do this, and wills to do this; therefore he cannot do this." He is therefore not omnipotent but impotent in this respect, against the seventh part of the first Corollary of this book and against the general faith of the Church. Hence also Augustine, Enchiridion 76: C22

"For almighty God," he says, "it is always as easy to do what he wills as it is easy not to allow to be what he does not will. Unless we believe this, the very beginning of our confession, by which we profess to believe in God almighty, is imperilled. For he is truly called almighty for no other reason than that he can do whatever he wills; nor is the effect of the almighty's will hindered by the will of any nature whatever." Again, the divine will is an act of power, as is known, and of a power no less than infinite, by the first supposition and the fourth part of the first Corollary of this book. It therefore surpasses everything finite, and is surpassed by nothing, not even by anything infinite, because God alone is such, by the seventeenth part of the first Corollary of this book; nor does he surpass his own will, nor does he have in himself anything contrary to it. Hence Augustine says in City of God 5, 9: D1 "In his will is the highest power"; and in Enchiridion 75: "It is most efficacious." Again, if the divine will were frustrated by anything, or even overcome, it would seem most of all to be by a created will, angelic or human; then this would exceed that in power, which the first supposition does not grant. D2 And Isaiah 47 says: "No man shall resist me"; and earlier in the same book, 14: "The Lord of hosts has decreed, and who can annul it?" And the Apostle to the Romans 9: "Who shall resist his will?" It is also written in Esther 13, and the holy Church sings: "Lord God almighty, all things are placed in your power, E1 and there is no one who can resist your will; if you have decreed to save us, we shall at once be set free."3 And Psalm 113 [115]: "All things whatsoever he willed, he did." E2 Augustine, treating this in Enchiridion 75, says that it would certainly not be true if he had willed some things and not done them and, what is more unworthy, had not done them because the will of man prevented what the Almighty wished from coming to pass. Again, if God did not always do whatever he wished, he would need help in doing some things; this is against the fifth part of the first Corollary of this book, and against certain things premised in the fifth of this book. To this end there are also very many authorities, philosophical and theological. E3 Hermes, for instance, speaking of God in On the Eternal Word 9, says that all things depend on his will; and he adds: "For supreme perfection belongs to it,4 since in one and the same point of time it completes both the willing and the accomplishing; for necessity follows the pleasure of God, and the effect accompanies his will."5

And further on, 22: "He alone," he says, "since he is most full of the fruitfulness of both sexes for all things, always pregnant with his own will, A1 always brings forth whatever he has willed to beget." Aristotle too, in On the World, last chapter, showing that God, though he is one, nevertheless has many names, and explaining some of those names, speaks thus: "I think that necessity too is said to be nothing other than the insuperable substance, A2 and Adrasteia, since she is an inescapable cause."6 And Avicenna says in Metaphysics 10, his chapter 1: "The gathering together of all these things proceeds of necessity from the necessity of the divine will." And Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter 6, 20: A3 "The will of the creator of things is necessity,"7 and he shows this there at great length, with a long development. And the same, in On Free Choice 3, 3: "His will is for me necessity." And the same, Enchiridion 83: "He must be asked to will it, because it must come to pass if he wills it." And Anselm says in Why God Became Man 2, 17: "If you wish A4 to know the true necessity of all that he did and suffered, know that it was wholly from necessity, because he himself willed it." And again Augustine, Enchiridion 77, treating that saying of the Apostle in 1 Timothy 2, "who wishes all men to be saved," and that in Matthew 23, "How often have I wished to gather your children together, and you would not," shows that the divine will is not hindered or in any way frustrated in these cases, and in many following chapters he proves the same. Hence also in 83 he says that, however great the wills of angels and of men, good and evil, may be, whether willing what God wills or something else, the will of almighty God is always unconquered; and in 84: "The Almighty cannot will in vain whatever he has willed"; and in 85: "It is not to be believed that almighty God willed something to be done, and it was not done. For he who, without any ambiguity, whether in heaven or on earth, as the Truth sings, did all things whatsoever he willed, surely did not will to do whatever he did not do."8 Therefore through Isaiah 46 also God speaks thus: "All my will shall be done"; and further on in the same book, 55: "The word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but shall do whatever I have willed."

Again, otherwise God's purpose would be frustrated in something, or could be frustrated; which is expressly against Anselm, Why God Became Man 1, 4, 20, 26, and book 2, 4 and 8. C1 Again, Cyprian, the glorious martyr and doctor of God, expounding that petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," speaks thus: "We pray not that God may do what he wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who stands in God's way, to keep him from doing what he wills?" And this is what that leper faithfully declared when he said, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean," Mark 1 and Luke 5; and the Saviour's answer, when he said "I will; be cleansed,"9 shows it beyond doubt. For the effect of cleansing at once followed this will, as the Evangelist adds: "And when he had said this, immediately the leprosy left him, C2 and he was cleansed." On this Bede, in the first book on Mark, 6, says: "The leper's very confession is full of devotion and faith; for in the will of the Lord he assigned the power." And further on: "There is nothing between the work of God and his command, because in the command is the work; finally, he spoke, and they were made. You see, therefore, that it cannot be doubted that the will of God is power *D1; and further on: "and at the same time it is marvellous that he healed in the very manner in which he had been entreated: 'If you will, you can make me clean'; 'I will,' he says, 'be cleansed': you have the will, you have also the effect of compassion. Therefore, as very many of the Latins think, it is not to be joined and read 'Volo mundare', but separately, so that he first says 'I will', and then commands, 'Be cleansed.'" The same author, in book 2 on Luke 5, expounds the same to the same sense. D2 Thomas also, in the Gloss on Mark, recites there this from Chrysostom: "By this he not only did not destroy the leper's opinion but rather confirmed it; for with a word he drives off the disease, and what the leper had said in a word, here he fulfilled in deed."10 And on that passage of Luke 5 the same Glossator recites this saying from Ambrose: "He heals in the same manner in which he had been entreated. Now there is nothing between the work of God and his command, so that you may understand the effect of the healer to be the power of the work." Where he also recites this from Cyril: "An imperious command went forth from majesty. How, then, is the only-begotten Son reckoned among servants, who by merely willing can do all things? It is read of God the Father that he did all things whatsoever he willed; but he who wields the power of his Father, how will he differ from him in nature? Marvel, however, in these things at Christ working both divinely and bodily: for it is divine so to will that all things come to be at hand, E1 but human to stretch out the right hand." E2 And Ecclesiastes 8 testifies to this more clearly than daylight, saying: "Whatever he wills, he will do, and his word is full of power." Damascene, Sentences, last chapter, says in agreement: "He who by will alone changed dust into a body, who is the maker of all things, who built all these things by a command: believe, therefore, that the resurrection of the dead too will be, by divine power, and will, and nod; for he has power running together with will." E3 Hugh, too, in On the Sacraments book 1, part 4, chapter 15, and Lombard, Sentences 1, distinction 45, plainly hold this.

Corollary

The Corollary holds that, upon God's willing to do something, or to have it done, through himself or through anything else in any way whatever, it necessarily follows that it is done in that way; that he does not, as we do by striving, apply other forces; that no other executive power is to be posited in him beyond the dictating intellect and the consenting will; that he is no differently disposed when working than when at rest; and that the divine will is the first free principle.

From these things it follows manifestly that, upon God's willing to do something, or to have it done, through himself or through anything else in any way whatever, it necessarily follows that it is done in that way; nor does he, in our manner, apply other forces by striving; nor is another executive power to be posited in him beyond the dictating intellect and the consenting will, as is posited by some; nor is he otherwise disposed when working than when at rest. From this it is inferred, no less evidently, that the divine will is the first free principle. For if anything other than God's willing were required for the doing, his will would not be by itself sufficient for acting, against what was said earlier. Again, God's will is in some way operative outside itself, as our will moves the first bodily motion in us, and not merely finitely: for that conflicts with the first supposition, the third part of the first Corollary, and the fourth. Nor is there any reason why it should be under one finite degree rather than another; therefore it is infinitely so. He therefore does not demand any posterior executive power in God, as though it were a supplement to a defect of his efficacy. Again, if such an executive power is posited, it naturally stands between the divine will and the work, against the authorities of Bede and Ambrose alleged above; and it is against Damascene, who says that "by will alone he changed" and so on. The other part of this corollary is clear from this, that one can will equally when working and when resting, and above all God himself, since by the fifth of this book he cannot be changed at all.

C1 Augustine also says in the Sentences of Prosper 157: "It is not right to believe that God is differently disposed when he is at leisure and when he is at work. For he who is affected is acted upon, and everything that is acted upon is changeable. So let no sluggish idleness be thought of in God, nor laborious effort, since he knows how to act while at rest, and to be at rest while acting." That the divine will is the first free principle is also apparent from this: by the second supposition, there is no infinite regress among free principles, but there is some one first; and that cannot be posited in any second cause, because by the immediately preceding chapters every second cause is necessarily subject to the first cause in all its causing. Moreover, if the first cause did not act freely but purely of necessity, then, since all second causes in whatever causing they do are necessarily subject to the first cause, as the ninth and tenth clearly teach, all their causations, like every causation of the first cause, would come about purely of necessity; hence freedom, contingency, and merit would perish entirely. Nor is it fitting, in the natural order of causes, that the inferior and second cause should be freer than the supreme and first; nor is that possible in any way. The latter is in all things the regulating, the former in all things necessarily regulated; the latter subjecting, the former subject; the latter preceding and ruling, the former following in all things and serving, as the ninth and tenth premises make plain. The first free principle, therefore, is necessarily in God, and not primarily in his essence, because by the first and second chapters that is altogether necessary to be; nor in the divine intellect, because it necessarily understands all things; nor in any power other than will; for all other powers are purely natural, and, if they acted with the will set aside, they would act purely naturally and of necessity, as the beginning of the ninth chapter showed. Freedom, therefore, is to be posited in the will alone, and the simply first freedom in the simply first will, which is God's.