Forty Fifth Distinction

Single Question. Whether God from Eternity willed Things Other than Himself

1. About the forty fifth distinction I ask whether God from eternity willed things other than himself.

That he did not

Because then in the divine will there would have been a real relation to creatures. The consequent is false (as is plain from distinction 30 nn.49-51), therefore the antecedent is too.

2. Proof of the consequence: God first wills something before he understands that he wills it (let that thing be a), because - as was said in distinction 39 [see interpolation for that distinction] - the certitude of the divine intellect about future contingents is not without the certitude and rectitude of the will; therefore the relation, which is in the divine will first to a, itself precedes all consideration by the intellect about that volition; therefore it is not in the will or in volition as it is known but as it is in itself, - and consequently it is there from the nature of the thing, and not in the known as it is known.

3. On the contrary:

If he did not will from eternity, then neither does he will now de novo, because then he would be mutable; therefore he wills nothing.

I. To the Question

4. I reply:

Every perfect operative power can be the power of operating about any object that is of a nature to have a respect to such power, - just as a perfect intellect can be the principle of understanding anything intelligible and perfect sight of seeing anything visible; therefore since in God there is will formally (from distinction 2 nn.75-88), and even will supremely perfect ‘because infinite’ (from the same distinction nn.94, 101, 117-

118, 234-235, 300-303), the result is that it can be the principle of willing anything will-able.

5. But it cannot be a principle of willing anything from time, because this could not be without the change of something; and not of the willed object, because the willed object only has being because it is willed and because it is in the divine will; therefore this change would be in the will itself, as was deduced in distinction 30 n.41 about the idea of the will itself. Therefore the divine will can in its own eternity be the principle of willing anything will-able.

6. But it is not the idea of willing both opposites at the same time, because opposites cannot be at the same time with respect to anything; nor is the idea of willing neither of them, because then nothing in creatures would be willed by God, - and consequently he would cause nothing in creatures, because contingency can only be in God on the part of the will, as was deduced in distinction 39 [in the interpolation for that question]. Therefore there is in eternity the idea of willing any other object in anything other than himself.

II. To the Principal Arguments

7. To the arguments [nn.1-2] I reply that as was said before in distinction 30 n.31 about relations from time that have God as their term under a purely absolute idea, and in like manner about the ideas in distinction 35 n.27, and in like manner about omnipotence in distinction 43 nn.11, 14 (and omnipotence is purely absolute as it is a divine attribute, and thus is it the term of the relation of a possible creature to God), - so I say here that the divine will under a purely absolute idea is the term of the respect of the will-able thing to God himself, because indeed the divine will produces things in eternity in willed being as the intellect produces in known or understood being; and in like manner one must say that this willed being is present as being in itself in the will, as was said about the being of being known in distinction 36 nn.26-29, 34-35.

8. But then you will argue: if the willed thing has a relation to the divine will, -either then a real relation or a relation of reason only. If real then its foundation is real; therefore the thing has real being from eternity. If a relation of reason only, - on the contrary: the relation does not come from an act of the divine intellect comparing the object to his intellect, - therefore there is in it no relation of reason; for although the divine intellect compare the object as known to his intellect before the object is willed by him, and although in that prior stage he cause a relation of reason of the object itself as known to his intellect, yet he does not seem to cause any relation of it to the will.

9. Although one could here [n.8] respond that this relation of the willed thing to the will is from an act of the divine intellect comparing the willed object to his own will (because he compares his will to the object before he compares it to his intellect), yet if the same ‘being’ were posited as sufficient in the object of the intellect as it is a known object and in the object of the will as it is willed, and if this would in no way be present to the will save because it was present to the intellect, - yet I reply in another way that in the willed object there is a relation to the divine will other than the relation in it which is as of the understood object to the divine intellect; and that other relation is not a real relation, - nor yet is it a relation of reason, speaking strictly of a relation of reason, namely one of the intellect.

10. Nor is the division sufficient that every relation ‘is either real or of reason’, taking relation of reason strictly, because every power that can have an act about an existing object but not as it is existent, and that can by its act compare that object to another to which such object is not compared from the nature of the thing - every such power can cause in the object, as it is object, a relation of reason between itself and something else; which relation is not real, because it is not from the nature of the object in itself, - nor yet is it strictly of reason, because the comparing power is not always only reason or a ratiocinative power.

11. For the will, when using some object for an end, can cause in the object a relation of reason to the end; and it is not a real relation, because it is not in the object from the nature of the thing but from the comparison made by the comparing will (for it can use God in relation to the creature); nor is it a relation of reason, because the power ‘causing the comparison’ is not reason, - whether intellect or imagination is said to be such a comparing power, or anything else; for it is certain that the will is such a comparing and conferring power (and the imaginative power likewise), just as well as the intellective power is; and therefore it is certain that each of these powers [sc. intellective and volitional] can compare its own object and can cause a relation in its own object; not a real relation, because it would thus be there, in such object, from the nature of the thing without any comparison, - nor a relation of reason taken strictly as a relation caused by the intellect, although sometimes it be accompanied by a relation of reason caused by the intellect. But the divine will, and even any will (whatever may be true of imagination, about which we will not speak now), can compare itself to the object in willed being from eternity (and conversely), and so it can cause in the object a relation of reason to itself.