Book I, Chapter 20

Chapter 20. He likewise distinguishes things willed into those prior and those posterior to the divine will. He shows that things willed posterior are not the cause of the divine willing, nor a cause without which it would not occur;1 and that things willed prior are some cause of it.

With these points established, it will be settled that things willed posterior to the divine willing are not the cause of the divine willing, nor a cause without which it would not occur, as some imagine; and that things willed prior are some cause of it. Now some things willed are prior to the divine willing, such as that God exists, that God is omnipotent, good, knowing, and the like.2 Others are posterior, such as that the whole world exists, and each of its parts. These three points about the divine willing can be shown in the same way as the three earlier chapters, namely the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth, showed three similar points about the divine knowledge. They can also be argued in another way, by the topic of similarity: so it is in the divine knowledge; therefore so also in

the divine willing, especially since the will is as free as the intellect, or freer. Again, the first part of this can be shown from the fact that the will of God is the cause of all posterior things, as the ninth and fourteenth chapters taught. If, then, any of these were the cause of the divine willing, it would be the cause of itself. Again, otherwise God would not know the true posterior things, as the opinion of the eighteenth makes plain. Nor would God be certain of them, since for his willing an uncertain cause would of necessity be required beforehand, namely those posterior things, as future contingents; and these in turn would be required for his knowledge, as is argued more fully in the same eighteenth. Again, since God knows of necessity one part of any contradiction, and does so in all posterior things known, through his will, by the same chapter, if his willing were caused by the posterior things willed, the divine will would necessarily undergo from them either willing or not-willing.3 How, then, does it have a free will? Again, if the will of God were to undergo such things not of necessity but freely, it could fail to undergo them thus, and still do all the same things. It is therefore posited in vain that it is so affected. Again, if God through his will could at one time not be so affected and at another be so affected, he could in some way be changed, against the fifth.4 For whatever is affected by a changeable cause is affected changeably, and is itself changeable. Again, it is more perfect to act simply and not to be affected by such things than to be so affected, as the preceding chapters taught. This, therefore, and not the other, must be attributed to God, as the first Supposition dictates. Again, future contingents are not a cause moving the divine will, because then they would be future naturally before they moved it, and before God willed them to be future; this is against the fourteenth and eighteenth, as the fifteenth also argued about the knowledge of such things. This could also be shown by the many authorities alleged in the ninth chapter, and especially by those which say that the will of God is the first and highest cause of all things. If it were moved by something else, that would be prior and superior; for every efficient cause, or mover, is naturally prior and superior to what it moves. Again, Peter Lombard plainly holds this, Sentences 1, distinction 45, 4, saying: This supremely good will, therefore, is the cause of all things that come to be naturally,

or have been made, or are to be; it is preceded by no cause, because it is eternal, and so a cause of it is not to be sought. B1 For this he brings many authorities, first Augustine, Eighty-three Questions, 28, who says: Whoever asks why God willed to make the world is seeking a cause of the will of God; but every efficient cause is greater than what it effects, and nothing is greater than the will of God.5 Again, Augustine, On Genesis against the Manichaeans, 1, 5: The Manichaeans seek to know the causes of the will of God, when that will is itself the cause of everything that is. If the will of God has a cause, there is something that precedes the will of God, which it is wrong to believe. So whoever asks, Why did God make heaven and earth? must be answered: Because he willed. But whoever asks, Why did he will? is seeking something greater than the will of God; and can anything greater be found? Let human rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what is not, lest it fail to find what is. Hugh also holds this, in On the Sacraments, book 1, B2 part 4, chapter 1, saying: The first cause of all things is the will of the Creator, which no preceding cause moves and no later cause confirms in anything, because it is just of itself. And below, at the end: Here, then, the order of things is established, that posterior things follow after the first. The first of all is the will of the Creator, because all things are from it; after it follow the things that are from it. The first are those that are in it; the second are those that are from it. Those that are in it are eternal, and have neither degree nor succession, because they subsist in unity and do not pass away in eternity; those that are from it have been created through it. The remaining parts can be shown as the sixteenth and seventeenth, on the non-causation and the causation of the divine knowledge, showed similar things.