A. To the Principal Argument

294. To the arguments set down on behalf of the opinion of the philosophers [sc. that something else besides God is immutable, n.223].

As to what they argue about an ancient change in the First thing if the First thing is not necessarily related to what is next to it [n.223], I reply that a new effect could come about from an ancient will without any change of will. Just as I, by that same continued will of mine by which I wish something to be done, will then do it at the ‘when’ at which I will to do it, so God in his eternity wished something other than himself to be at some time and then created it at the ‘when’ at which he willed it to be.

295. And if you object, according to Averroes Physics VIII com.4, that he will at least be waiting for time, if he does not at once put the effect into being when he wishes it to be; -

296. - and in addition to this, according to Averroes elsewhere, a thing indeterminate by contingency posits such indeterminacy as to either eventuality, because what is thus indeterminate cannot of itself, as it seems, proceed to act; therefore if there is in God such contingency as to causing, he does not seem able of himself to be determined to causing.

297. To the first [n.295] I reply. Something existing and willing in time either wills with most efficacious volition, not having regard to the time for which it wills, - or it wills the thing to be for some definite time. If in the first way, it would at once put the willed thing into being if its will is perfectly powerful. If in the second way, to posit that its will were simply powerful would yet not put the thing at once into being but only at the time when it wanted the thing to be; it would wait then for time, because the thing is in time. - But when we apply this to God we must remove the imperfections. For neither is his will impotent nor does it have being in time so that it should wait for the time at which to produce the thing willed; which thing it does not will to be necessarily then when it wills, but it wills it for a determinate time; but it does not wait for the time, because the operation of his will is not in time.

298. And when Averroes speaks second ‘about the indeterminacy of a cause causing contingently’ [n.296], there was discussion elsewhere [I d.7 nn.20-21] about double indeterminacy, namely of passive power and of active unlimited power. For God was not indeterminate as to causing with the first indeterminacy but with the second, and this not to several disparate things (to each of which he is naturally determined) in the way the sun is related to the many effects it is capable of, but he is indeterminate to contradictories, to each of which he could be of his liberty determined. So too our will is indeterminate in this way, virtually, with indetermination of active power as to either contradictory, and it can of itself be determined to this or that.

299. And if you ask why the divine will, then, will be more determined to one contradictory than to the other, I reply: ‘it is a mark of lack of education to seek causes and demonstration for everything’ (according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 4.4.1006a5-8, 6.1011a8-13), ‘for there is not demonstration of a principle of demonstration’. But it is a thing immediate that the will wills this thing, such that there is no cause intermediate between these terms, just as it is a thing immediate that heat heats (but here it is a matter of nature, there of freedom), and so of this ‘why the will wills’ there is no cause save that the will is the will, just as of this ‘why heat heats’ there is no cause other than that heat is heat, because there is no prior cause.

300. And if you say ‘how can there be immediacy here, since there is contingency to either result?’, there was discussion elsewhere in the question ‘On the subject of theology’ [Prol. n.169], that in contingent things there is some first thing which is immediate and yet contingent, because no stand is made at something necessary (for the contingent does not follow from the necessary), and so it is necessary here to make a stand at this proposition ‘the will of God wills this’, which is contingent and yet immediate, because no other cause is prior to the reason of the will as to why it is of this and not of something else. - By this is apparent the answer to what Averroes adduces, that ‘his own action is in him by his essence’ and is not in him accidentally; it is true that his willing is his essence, yet his willing contingently passes to this object and to that, as will be said later ‘about future contingents’ [I d.39, see footnote to n.281].

301. By this the answer to the principal argument [n.223] is plain, that with the necessity of God stands the fact that what he is immediately related to is mutable, because ‘immediately from the immutable’ is mutable without change of the immutable, because the relation of the immutable to what is next to it is mutable; and therefore the extreme of that relation is contingent and mutable, although the foundation is immutable.