Book I, Chapter 9

Chapter Ix

That the divine will is the efficient cause of anything made, the mover or moving cause of any motion, and universally the most loving begetter, nurse, and life-giving preserver of all things.

To this, however, I think there should be joined the proposition that the divine will is the efficient cause of anything made, the mover or moving cause of any motion, and universally the most loving begetter of all things and their life-giving preserver. All this follows manifestly from 3, 4 and 2, together with the immediately preceding chapter. And this *D1 can also be confirmed by certain reasons and by philosophical and theological authorities.

For in causes of this kind there is no infinite regress, by the second supposition. There is therefore some one first cause of all things, which is God, as was shown above. But that cause cannot be posited to be God according to his absolute essence. For that essence, so far as it is of itself, stands equally and indifferently toward possibles that will never come to be as toward things that are to be done, toward remote futures as toward near ones, and toward things in motion as toward things at rest. Therefore all these things, too, would likewise and equally always be. This is above all so because, if anything were made by his essence alone without any will, it would be made by way of nature and necessity, like the effect of natural causes, since freedom is placed in the will alone. And such natural causes, whenever they can, with the due disposition of the patient supposed, always act necessarily. For in this respect these causes differ from voluntary causes, which participate in reason, as is plain from Metaphysics 9, 10, and likewise in the Commentary 1. Therefore, since all inferior or second causes, in whatever causation of theirs, are necessarily subject to the first cause, all their causations, like every causation of the first cause, would proceed from necessity of nature and from a wholly absolute necessity. Hence universally all freedom and contingency, and merit, would be destroyed.

For it does not befit the natural order of causes that the inferior, second cause be freer than the supreme and first; nor is that possible in any way. For the first is in all things the regulating cause, the second in all things necessarily regulated. The first subjects, the second is subjected. The first precedes and rules, the second follows in all things and serves as a handmaid. Again, if God acted outwardly purely naturally, he would act to the utmost of his power, and so of a power necessarily infinite. Every effect of his would then be simply infinite and equal to himself, since he can do more than any lesser thing, as the first Supposition shows. Nor can the divine cognition alone be posited as the cause of all things of this kind, as the preceding chapter showed. No sufficient cause of this kind therefore remains, unless the divine will is posited. Again, whoever does something freely does it voluntarily; and God acts freely whatever he does outwardly, for it is more perfect to act so. Otherwise, moreover, thanksgivings would be irrational, and the prayers of all toward God would be empty. Again, otherwise God would have no will, or would not use his own will in all the aforesaid effects that come from him, as was shown above; and that, without doubt, is the more fitting. Many Philosophers bear witness to this same thing. For the learned Plato, in Timaeus 1, 1, where he treats of the generation of the world, speaking of God, says B1 thus: "He was the best; and from the best, envy has been banished far away 2. And so he willed that all things be made like himself, as far as the nature of each could be capable of blessedness." If anyone posits this will of God as the most certain origin of things, I agree that he thinks rightly.

Behold, as regards the production of things by God! And Plato holds the same about the conservation of things by God, in the third of the second 3, as is recited more fully in the second chapter of this book. With him his disciple Aristotle agrees in On the World 13 4, when he says universally that what the sailor or helmsman is in a ship, B2 according to another translation, the charioteer in a chariot, the choirmaster in a chorus, the law in a city, the leader in a column of march, or in an army according to another translation, this God is in the world. For he himself, unmoved, moves and carries round all things, wherever he wills, by diverse ideas and natures. And below, in the same work: "The vines, and palms, and Persian figs, sweet ones, and olives, as the Poet says 5, and also unfruitful trees, whose work is nevertheless for another purpose, such as the plane, pine, box, linden, poplars, cypress, and the like. The animals, too, both tame and wild, that live in air, on earth, or in water, are generated, grow, and are corrupted, obeying divine decrees (according to another translation, commands)." But decrees and commands are works of the will.

The same author, higher up, in the same 9th chapter: "Just as," he says, "when the choirmaster begins, the whole chorus sings together in various high and low voices, making one continuous harmony, so it is with the world in God, who disposes all things. For by a supernal infusion from the so-named Choirmaster the stars are always moved, and the whole heaven proceeds; and the shining Sun, dividing day and night, and the four seasons of the year. Rains come about, and winds, and dews, and other happenings, on account of the first and original cause. There follow upon these the flowing of rivers, the flooding of the sea, the springing up of trees, the ripening of fruits, the generations of animals, the nourishment, growth and corruption of all things, the condition of each thing cooperating in these. When therefore the Leader (according to another translation, Prince) and Begetter of all things gives a sign (according to another translation, commands) to all nature spread between heaven and earth, it is moved continually in its own circles and bounds (according to another translation, limits), now disappearing, now appearing, showing a thousand ideas (according to another translation, forms) and hiding them again, from one principle." But to give a sign and to command is the operation of the will.

The same author, in the book On the Secret of Secrets 6, part 1, 23, says: "The king is in the kingdom as rain on the earth, which is the grace of God, the blessing of heaven, the life of the earth, the aid of living things." Hence men too praise God, considering the signs of his grace, the gifts of his mercy, namely rains and winds and the other impressions that he sends forth from the treasury of his mercy, who by supreme providence has unavoidably fixed the colds and heats of winter and summer. The author also says above, in 1, that God grants to those who study the grace of knowing. But to make, to provide for, and to establish grace and mercy: who does not know that this belongs to the will? Nor ought this book to be numbered among the Apocrypha because it speaks of the grace and mercy of God, which seem more theological than philosophical terms. For the philosophical books, well enough known to all, speak of the same things. E1 For the Philosopher, in Ethics 10, 14 7, sets out a threefold opinion on how men become good, saying: "Some think that men become good by nature, others by habit, others by teaching." And he holds that each of these opinions has some truth, and for the first opinion he adds: "What belongs to nature, then, is evidently not in our power, but exists through some divine cause, and truly exists in the well-fortuned." On this Averroes says: E2 "Some men are thought to be good by nature, and some by teaching; and it is plain that what comes about in this matter by nature is not from us, but through a certain divine grace; to these also good fortune truly belongs."

Nor can anyone pretend that by this divine cause, and grace, and fortune, only some celestial or astral influence is understood, of the kind that astronomers are wont to dream up in nativities or conceptions. A1 For according to the same Philosopher, in On Good Fortune 2: "Good fortune is from God, who immediately moves the intellect of the well-fortuned toward the attainment of fortunate outcomes." For he says thus: "What is sought is this: what is the principle of motion in the soul? Plainly, as in the whole, namely in the universe. For God in some way moves all the things that are in us; and the divine principle of reason is not reason but something better. What then will be better than knowledge and intellect, if not God? For virtue is the organ of the intellect; and on this account, as they were once called, 8 those are named 'well-fortuned' who, if they make an impulse, direct it aright though they lack reason, and it is not expedient for them to take counsel. For they have such a principle, which is better than intellect and counsel; but those who have reason A2 do not have this, nor divine instincts."

Averroes also, in the Prologue to Physics 1, says that the perfect grace of man is man's own being perfected through speculative sciences. And that he means the grace that is given gratis by God is plain from the same Averroes on On the Heavens 1, Commentary 32. There he says that he himself spent a long time in delay, because he did not understand the explanation of that passage where Aristotle proves that no motion is contrary to circular motion; and he adds, "But God led me to the truth." And the same, on On the Soul 2, Commentary 34, says of the mercy of God: "When divine solicitude could not make a living thing persist according to the individual, it took pity ‖B1 in giving it the power by which it can persist according to the species." This opinion about the grace of God, set out above, is also attested by B2 Hermes, in the last chapter of On the Eternal Word 9, as had been recited in the sixth chapter of this book. On this point B3 Sixtus the Pythagorean also says in his little Sentences: "The grace of God is not subject to fate." Moreover, very many of the ancient Philosophers posited the love of God as the original principle of all things whatsoever; and love is by no means separated from will. For the Philosopher, in Metaphysics 1, recites Hesiod and Parmenides saying that the love of the gods, providing for all things, is the principle of the generation of the universe. This love established all things; and it must exist in beings and be a cause that moves and gathers the things themselves.

And Empedocles held the same, as is recited of him by the same Philosopher in Metaphysics 3, 15. C1 In many places of philosophy the Philosopher touches on the opinions of those who posit love and hatred, or friendship and strife, as the principles of generation and corruption in all beings whatsoever. This is said not unreasonably if it is understood that the love, or willing, of God is the cause why something is generated and persists, and his not-willing the cause why something is not generated, or does not persist, but is corrupted once generated. Avicebron also, in the book that he calls the Fountain of Life 10, proves this very point at length, C2 and especially in book 5 from chapter 35, almost through to the end, as the second chapter of this book has recited more fully 11. He also says thus at 37: "All these motions in spiritual and corporeal substances are derived from the will. It must therefore follow from this that all spiritual and corporeal substances are movable by the will. An example of this is that the will of the soul moves the body, or makes some member of it be still, as there is stillness when the breath is held. And this motion, which is diffused in all substances by the will, differs in strength and weakness on account of the diversity of the recipients, not on account of any diversity of the will in itself." And in the last chapter: "Creation is likened to the word that a man speaks. For when a man speaks, by his words his form and intellect are impressed in the hearing of the hearer and in his intellect. And so it is said that the Sublime and Holy One spoke a word, and his intellect was impressed upon matter, and matter retained it," namely because the created form was impressed upon matter and depicted in it.

D1 Likewise Avicenna, Metaphysics 9, 7, showing that nothing happens by chance, but that all things come from divine care, speaks thus: "You have no way to say what happens by chance, because reason leads you to judge that all things happen from governance and ordering. For you must know that the care of them arises from this: that the First knows himself, and that from him comes the necessity of the ordering of goodness, and that his essence is the cause of goodness and perfection, so far as is possible for things and as it pleases him, as was said before." The same, Metaphysics 10, 1, says: "All this flows down from above, and does not follow only from the imagination of the heavenly bodies; but because the First, the True, knows this whole, therefore the charge of what comes to be begins from him" 12. And below in the same place, of natural and voluntary things, heavenly and earthly, he says thus: "The collection of all these things therefore proceeds necessarily from the necessity of the divine will." E1 Algazel 13, Metaphysics 3, ‖E2 sentence 7, shows the same plainly, since God does not act only from nature but from knowledge, and every action that is subject to knowledge is subject to will; everything therefore that flows from it is pleasing to him, nor does he hate any of these things. Very many authorities also attest this view, in the second chapter of this book, set out above. E3 The same is shown plainly through canonical Scripture. For in Apocalypse 4 the twenty-four witnesses, beyond all exception, testify to this with one voice, saying before him who sits on the throne: "You are worthy, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, because you created all things, and because of your will they were, and were created."

The Psalmist also, in Psalm 148, having roused all the heavenly beings in order to praise the Lord, A1 adds this reason: "because he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created." So too it is read in Genesis 1, of the works of the six days: "God said, Let this be, and let that be, and it was so." A2 But to command is proper to the will, and likewise to say, in this place. A3 For Rabbi Moses says in the Guide of the Perplexed, 63 14, that "word" is threefold: namely, that spoken by the tongue, that conceived by the mind, and the will. Only the last two belong to the Creator. Expounding that verse of the Psalm, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established," he says that it signifies that these things were devised with his intention and will. And after the Psalmist roused the heavenly things to praise the Lord together, he likewise exhorts the earthly things next: "Praise," he says, "the Lord from the earth, dragons and all abysses, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, which do his word," that is, the command of his will. And not only these things, but by the same reasoning all others too.

Hence Augustine teaches in On the Trinity 3, 8 B1 that the first and highest cause is nothing but the will of God, both for natural events that happen in the usual course and frequently, and for those that follow the same order but rarely. The frequent ones are the risings and settings of the stars, the generation and death of animals, the countless varieties of seeds and shoots, mists and clouds, snows and rains, lightning and thunder, thunderbolts and hailstorms, winds and fires, cold and heat, and all such things. The rare ones are the eclipses of the luminaries, unusual appearances, portents of the stars, earthquakes, and all similar things. Hence in the Psalm too: when certain things of this kind had been mentioned, says Augustine, such as fire, hail, snow, ice, the stormy wind, lest anyone should believe that these things happen by chance, or by bodily causes alone, or even by spiritual ones that nevertheless exist apart from the will of God, B2 he added at once: "which do his Word." Likewise Psalm 134 [135]: "Whatever the Lord willed, he did, in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in all the depths." And Judith 9: "This was done, which you yourself willed." And there are plenty of similar passages in Scripture. B3 Likewise Augustine, On the Trinity 3, 4: The will of God, dwelling in the heavenly fatherland among the blessed spirits as on a lofty throne, as in his own house and temple, from there pours itself out, through the most ordered motions of creation, first spiritual and then corporeal, through all things; and it makes use of all things, according to the unchangeable judgment of its decree, whether incorporeal or corporeal, irrational or rational. Among the spiritual, it uses those who are good through its grace and those who are evil through their own will. And almost throughout that whole book he shows, in many chapters, that the divine will is the first and highest cause of all things. The same Augustine says in the Enchiridion 6: It is enough for a Christian to believe that the cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, visible or invisible, is nothing but the goodness of the Creator. And in On Genesis against the Manichees 1: The will of God is itself the cause of all things that are. ‖C1 So when someone asks, "Why did God make heaven and earth?", the answer must be: because he willed to. For the will of God is the cause of heaven and earth. The same Augustine says in the Questions of Orosius 39: Every cause of a creature is the will of the Creator. Moreover, everything that is or comes to be, is and comes to be with God as Author and by his willing, as is clear from Augustine, Eighty-three Questions, 3. He explains the meaning of the term thus: when it is said "with God as Author," it is said "with him willing." Now God is the Author of every thing. For among authors there is no infinite regress, but there is some one first Author of all; and this will necessarily be God. Augustine also says, in City of God 12, 5: There is no nature at all of which God is not the Author and Founder. This is found very often elsewhere as well; and it is what the whole Church bears witness to, when in Paschal joy it sings the hymn: "Who is the Author of all…" D1 etc. Hugh also, in On the Sacraments, book 1, part 4, chapter 10 and the last, shows that the divine will is the first cause of all things. From all this the principal proposition is clear in each of its parts. Yet, over and above what has already been shown beforehand by arguments, I wish to make it plainer by a rough, more sensible example. I imagine that as the weight stands in our small clock, so God stands in the great clock of the world. For here the weight, while by its single motion it carries round the principal wheel, moves all things moved with all the motions, and each with each; it also stills things stilled and keeps things at rest, at fixed times, in that they strive toward one another and with the wheel by the clockmaker's art.15 So God in the world, while by his single willing he revolves16 the primary heavenly wheel, governs all the things moved by it, in all their variety, and likewise the things at rest. This is so much the more regular in the world than in a hand-made clock, as both its weight and its wheel are more orderly disposed, and as the other beings are more artfully bound to one another, to the wheel, E1 and to the weight by more powerful, though more hidden, bonds. Hence Wisdom 11: "You have ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight." Blessed Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter 4, 5, expounding this authority of the Wise Man and asking, if it be so, in what way these three, measure, number, and weight, are God or not God, speaks as follows: In the sense in which we know measure in the things we measure, number in the things we number, and weight in the things we weigh, these are not God. But in the sense in which measure fixes the limit for every thing, and number gives every thing its species, and weight draws every thing to rest and stability,

… it is He who first, truly, and uniquely is these: He who bounds all things, regulates all, forms all, and orders all. Nothing else is understood to have been said (so far as it could be said through a human heart and tongue), when we say "You have ordered all things in measure, number, and weight," than "You have ordered all things in yourself." It is a great thing, and granted to few, to surpass all that can be measured, so that a measure without measure may be seen; to surpass all that can be numbered, so that a number without number may be seen; to surpass all that can be weighed, so that a weight without weight may be seen. Hermes agrees with this imagining, in On the Eternal Word17 18: By spirit, he says, all things in the World are served, a spirit which is subject, like an instrument or machine, to the will of the highest God. And further on, in 26, he writes thus: This whole world is God's unchangeable work, a glorious construction, a good thing composed of a multiform variety of images, a machine of the will of God, which supports its own work *A1 without envy. Someone could imagine this same thing more truly if he imagined a clock with a wheel of perpetual motion, by the power of a weight that is immanent and not hanging from outside; for God, according to what has been laid down, is the innermost18 of every thing. ‖B1 But still someone could imagine this most truly, by imagining a wheel of perpetual motion from some attractive, or even repulsive, power eternally at rest. It would be as if the wheel had iron at the ends of its spokes, or on its rim, or were itself wholly of iron, and a magnet (attractive, or else repulsive, or near by its different ends to each power) were always to face it openly from one part of itself, while from another part it would be hidden from it by some obstacle, or more ingeniously in some other way. What, then, the magnet at rest, attracting or repelling, is in such a small clock, that is God, unmoved, willing or not willing, in the great clock of the World. Hence Wisdom 7: "Remaining in himself, he renews all things." Yet perhaps this whole matter could be thought out more similarly and closely to the example proposed, by supposing, according to the 2nd and 4th of these premises,19 that God first moves himself by a certain unmoved and unvarying motion, and all other things in consequence by all their variable motions. B2 Hence Hermes also, On the Eternal Word 34: It is credible, he says, that God is moved in himself with the same immobility. This thinking of God, or his motion, is to be reckoned an eternal willing. And this imagining, though crude, does not disagree with the subtle science of the physiologists, the astrologers, and the theologians. But lest I seem, with certain astrologers, to subject the free wills of men to the necessary servitude of the stars, I imagine further that as the greater World is a certain great clock, so man, who according to the Philosophers is called the lesser World, is a certain small clock: that one in a way natural, this voluntary; that one stationary, this portable. And as there the weight, or power of the divine will, by moving per se its first motion, namely the first Intelligence, together with the greatest wheel of heaven, moves the rest by whatever natural motions, as is demonstrated in Metaphysics 12, so here too, by moving per se the first motion in man, namely the rational Soul together with the wheel of the heart or of the head, it moves the rest of man's [organs], and the whole man himself, by whatever voluntary motions. And this is what was cited above from the Philosopher in On Good Fortune,20 namely that the principle of motion in our Soul, as in the whole universe, is God. For it moves, as he says, all that is in us: the divine principle of reason is not reason, but, being itself power, the organ of the intellect.21 Hence also Proverbs 21: "As the divisions of the waters, so is the heart of the king in the hand of the Lord: wherever he wills, he will turn it." So there is no doubt that it is the same with the hearts of any others whatever, since he made the small and the great, and has equal care for all, as is wisely said in Wisdom 6. Hence Isaiah 40 says: "Behold, the nations are reckoned as the moment of a balance before him"; the Gloss there says that the moment is tipped to either side by nothing.22 Hence each of us also prays with the Psalmist: "Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to greed," Psalm 118 [119]. On this Augustine says: What is it to have the heart inclined to something, if not to will it? So he prays that he may will, when he says: "Incline my heart," etc. Hence blessed Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter 4, 5, on the aforesaid authority of the Wise Man, immediately after his exposition of it cited above, adds: For measure, number, and weight can be observed and thought of not only in stones and wood and masses of that kind, and in bodily quantities. There is a measure of acting, so that the progress may not be irrevocable and immoderate; there is a number of the affections of the soul and of the virtues; and there is a weight of will and of love. But this measure of souls and minds is held in check by another measure, and the number is formed by another number, and the weight is carried off by another weight. Measure without measure, however, is that to which what is from it is made equal; Number without number is that by which all things are formed, while it is not itself formed; Weight without weight is that to which all things are carried back, that they may rest. And these three are God, as was cited above from the same place.

Corollary

The Corollary holds in every case: whatever things were made were made by the divine will, and whatever will be made will be made by it.

Hence it is evidently known that all things that are, were, or will be made, preserved, or moved, are, were, and will be from the divine will, and this in the ways set out in the Corollaries of the third, second, and fourth of these premises. This Corollary follows so plainly from what has been premised that it needs no proof. For if it is necessary that all things now made in the present be made in the present by the divine will, it is also correspondingly necessary concerning past and future things, and likewise concerning things preserved and things moved. When these are understood, and the Corollaries touched on before are grasped, I think the aforesaid moderated modes23 will not remain hidden. Little replies can be fashioned here too, such as were fashioned in the chapters above, and be refuted in the same way.