Divine Will

DIVINE WILL. - It comprises the whole complex of acts and virtues that form the affective life of the Supreme Being, Goodness by essence, infinite Love.

I. EXISTENCE

Sacred Scripture offers numerous testimonies in this regard. Genesis relates the repeated divine command, creative of the Universe: "Let there be light... Let there be a firmament... Let us make man" (Gen. 1): these are acts of divine intelligence which connote, according to the anthropomorphic style of the sacred text, just as many acts of free will. Will, freedom and divine omnipotence often appear interwoven in the praises rendered to God by the inspired authors (cf. Ps. 115, 3; 135, 5-6; Is. 46, 10; Esth. 13, 9). The New Testament points out to men in the divine will the supreme rule of their conduct: a rule which the human will of Jesus Christ always took as its inspiration: "Father, not my will, but thine be done" (Lk. 22, 42); "Our Father, who art in heaven... thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt. 6, 9, 10); "Be transformed by the renewal of your spirit, so that you may discern what is the will of God" (Rom. 12, 2).

The Fathers exalt the monotheistic and wholly spiritual conception of God above polytheistic and sensual paganism, and defend the wise and free providence of God. According to St. Thomas: "In God there is will as there is intelligence, since the will is intimately connected with the intellect as an inclination to the good apprehended through an intelligible species... Therefore it is necessary to admit that in God there is will, since there is intellect" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 19, a. 1 c.). In God, however, the will does not exist as an accident inherent in the substance of the being, as in created spirits, but is really identical with it, although it is distinguished from it conceptually. Nor, properly speaking, is the divine will a principle of "appetition," that is, of inclination toward a good not possessed and therefore desired; but it is the purest love of complacency in the Infinite Good, with which it forms a single thing (cf. St. Thomas, ibid., a. 1, ad 3; Contra Gent., 1, 73).

II. OBJECT

God wills only His own Goodness as the primary, necessary and inadmissible motive and object of His own will, the only object proportionate to the willing of the Supreme Being. Every other good, therefore, insofar as it is destined to exist outside of God, is a secondary and non-necessary term of the divine will: it is the effect of His free love, rather than its object and motive.

In Scripture the texts abound in which, while the inexhaustible expansive virtue of the Infinite Good is magnified, it is at the same time noted that God has created all things for His glory (Is. 43, 6-7; Ps. 115, 2-3; I Thess. 4, 3). "Thus, therefore, God wills Himself and other things. He wills Himself, however, as an end, and other things as a means to the end, since it befits the divine Goodness in a particular way to be communicated also to other beings" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 19, a. 2). In reality, the act by which God loves His own goodness and the goodness of creatures is one, just as its formal motive is one: the supreme lovableness of the Supreme Good, whether it be immanent in God or reflected and participated in the created universe. Therefore, God loves us for Himself, as the motive and ultimate end to which He destines us; He wills Himself to us, however, insofar as in the creation, conservation and government of all beings He aims at nothing other than the greater communication of His goodness, so as to impress His image more strongly upon them (Dante, Par., I, 103-108).

III. DOTI

These are repeatedly indicated by the Ecclesiastical Magisterium. The Council of Sens (1140) rejected as erroneous the assertion of Abelard: "God can do only what he has done, in the manner and at the time in which he accomplished it" (Denz-U, 374); the Council of Florence (1441) declared it to be the firm faith of the Roman Church that "the one and true God ... when he willed, moved by his goodness, produced all creatures, both spiritual and corporeal" (Denz-U, 706); Pius IX vindicated, against the semi-rationalism of A. Günther (v.), the "Catholic doctrine of God's supreme freedom, exempt from any necessity in the creation of things" (brief Eximiam tuam, 1857; Denz-U, 1655); the Vatican Council "believes and confesses that there is one true and living God ... Who, by his goodness and omnipotent power, not to increase his own beatitude or to acquire it, but in order to manifest his own perfection through the outpouring of the goods that he imparts to creatures, with a most free purpose, produced the universe out of nothing" (sess. III, cap. 1; Denz-U, 1782, 1783); and it declares anathema anyone who affirms that "God did not create the world by a will free from every necessity, but necessarily, just as he necessarily loves himself" (can. 5; Denz-U, 1865). Pius XII saw a dangerous novelty in the assertion of those who "hold that the creation of the world was necessary, because it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love" (encyclical Humani generis, 12 Aug. 1950; AAS, 4 [1950], p. 570). The Fathers and theologians concordantly defended the freedom of God the creator, against resurgent errors of a deterministic or optimistic stamp championed by Eckhart (v.) and Wyclif (v.) in the Middle Ages; and, more recently, by Luther (v.), Calvin (v.), Malebranche (v.), Leibniz (v.), Wolff (v.), Hermes (v.) and Günther (v.).

It cannot, however, be asserted that the divine freedom, having "a non-necessary relation" to creatures in themselves mutable and contingent, is in itself a mutable and contingent perfection. In reality, it is identified with the Pure Act and consists properly in the dominative power or active indifference of the divine will with respect to every good that is not the Infinite Good.

The will of God is furthermore "most ordered," because it is always regulated by supreme wisdom: "most simple," because it is free from every bond of internal and external dependence or succession of acts; "infallible" in its effect, provided that it is a matter of the "consequent" or absolute will (v. PREDESTINATION); "irresistible," that is, most strong and at the same time most gentle, because it does not impose on all beings the necessity of acting, but disposes necessary causes for the production of necessary effects, and contingent or free causes for the production of non-necessary effects, while it itself remains the first and universal cause of all; "most holy," because it is alien to willing in any way the moral evil, which it only permits in view of a greater good to be drawn from it by its omnipotent wisdom (v. BENE; MALE; PECCATO; PREDESTINAZIONE).

IV. ACTS AND VIRTUES

There are three principal acts of the will of God, distinguished from it only conceptually: love, which is the first and fundamental; delight and joy. "God properly delights in himself, and then rejoices in himself and in others" (Contra Gent., I, 90). God's love toward his own goodness is not love of concupiscence or of friendship, but a supreme complacency, which actualizes whatever perfection there is in both of these acts. Hatred, sadness, despair, fear, boldness, and anger are attributed to God in Scripture only in a metaphorical sense; to them there corresponds in the divine will an act of perfect conversion to the Good, which rejects every, even the least, affection toward evil. Justice and mercy (cf. Ps. 36:11; Is. 56:1; Jer. 23:6; Dan. 9:7; Cor. 1:3; Eph. 2:4) belong to God in a proper, formal, and eminent sense, identifying the apparent antinomy of their concepts in the higher unity of the Godhead. They are, in fact, nothing other than two distinct and coeternal aspects of Infinite Love; in their specific object and in their actual exercise they prescind from the existence of creatures.

Justice in God is nothing other than the most ordered love that he has of his infinite Goodness; mercy, then, is the purest love toward his perfection, capable of removing every misery of creatures (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 21). Therefore St. Thomas writes: "Every work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy, and is founded in it ... And so in every work of God mercy appears, as its first root" (ibid., a. 4 c). St. Bernard had expressed the same concept vividly, defining divine mercy as: "Causa causalissima causarum omnium". In the will of God all creatures have their source, and in conformity to it they find their own perfection and beatitude (cf. Par., III, 85-87).

Luigi Ciappi