Introductory Notes on Aquinas’s The Will of God

l’uomo nello stato bestiale ama solamente la sua salvezza (in his beastly state, man loves solely his salvation/safety)[1]

In the “Of God’s Will” (De voluntate Dei) section of his Summa Theologiæ (Part 1, Q. 19), St. Thomas Aquinas guides us to think about the problem of a divine will.  The primary and underlying concern here is divine providence, which we can speak of with confidence only where we assume that God’s will is somehow bound to our own, or, more precisely, that the determinations of our desire (what we want) are bound to divine, irreducible indetermination (God’s mind).  Yet, as a Platonist at heart,[2] Aquinas is bent upon reminding us that God is not to be understood ultimately in terms of a will.  Thus, no sooner does St. Thomas proceed “saying that will has its being in God” (dicendum in Deo voluntatem esse), than he adds, “just as in him is intellect” (sicut et in eo est intellectus): “for the will follows from the intellect” (voluntas enim intellectum consequitur).  The latter proposition helps us understand Aquinas’s previous propositions.  In the respect that the will follows from intellect, in God will has its being (esse): in God, will is none other than intellect.

Let us note the shift from nominative to accusative cases.  In Aquinas’s first two propositions, will is in the accusative, whereas intellect is in the nominative; in the “explanatory” proposition, will is nominative, while intellect is accusative.  To be sure, we could explain the shift away “syntactically” or literally, but only a more serious explanation would do justice to Aquinas’s argument.  What is primary for us is not primary for God.  Otherwise put, in God the will “acquiesces” (quiescat) perfectly or completely.  “Whence [the proposition that] will is in whoever has intellect” (unde in quolibet habente intellectum, est voluntas).  “And so it is fitting to say that the will has its being in God, since intellect is in him.  And as his act of intellection is his being, so is his will” (Et sic oportet in Deo esse voluntatem, cum sit in eo intellectus. Et sicut suum intelligere est suum esse, ita suum velle).  For the will is perfect in intellect.  Hence Aquinas’s earlier reference to St. Paul’s Rom. 12:2, where “the will of God [is] good and satisfying and complete” (τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Θεοῦ, τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον).  But to grasp the message, a “metamorphosis” is called for via a renewal of the mind, whereby our will is projected in God’s own, or in which will acquiesces in intellect.  In God, the human imperfect will finds its intellectual perfection.

Having established that, in a divine sense, there is will in God, St. Thomas responds to Objection 1, “saying that nothing other than God can be God’s end, even though he himself is the end for all those made by him.  And this is by his way of being [essentiam], for by his way of being he is good, as explained above: for the end is rationally tied to the good” (Ad primum ergo dicendum quod, licet nihil aliud a Deo sit finis Dei, tamen ipsemet est finis respectu omnium quae ab eo fiunt. Et hoc per suam essentiam, cum per suam essentiam sit bonus, ut supra ostensum est: finis enim habet rationem boni).  Why does Aquinas highlight an apparent contradiction between 1. God’s being his own end and 2. his being creatures’ end?  How are we to understand the Doctor’s nihil aliud?  “Nothing aside from” suggests that God is the qualitative totality embracing all ends, namely the good itself.  He is the end itself, whereas he appears as end to “all those made by him”: for the end has a ratio boni, a bond to the good, or a reason tied to the good (finis enim habet rationem boni).  What this tells us about the will is that, while in itself it acquiesces in the divine intellect, outside of itself (in that “otherness” that cannot be, however, aside from God), it appears as what we ordinarily speak of as “will”.  Hence, again, Aquinas’s reference to Rom. 12:2.  In order to appreciate what God’s will is in itself, a “renewal of the mind” (ἀνακαίνωσις τοῦ νοός) is needed.  This renewal or “rebirth” will transform us (whence St. Paul’s μεταμορφοῦσθε) into the good itself.

Will in the ordinary sense of the term is not in God, for “will is posited in God” (voluntas in Deo ponitur) only insofar as he already and always (semper) has the good itself as the object of his will—a good that is not different from him with respect to its way of being (essentiam—Reply to Obj. 2).  What God “wills” is then none other than God’s own way of being.  This is to say that God’s will is at rest in God’s proper intellective activity.  Whence the relevance of Aquinas’s response to his Objection 3: where God’s will coincides with his “way of being” (essentia), it moves itself as intellect (hence Aquinas’s reference to Plato).

Should we then conceive God’s will as being apart from us?  No, responds at once the doctor angelicus, appealing to St. Paul’s reference to God’s will (θέλημα τοῦ Θεοῦ) as “your consecration” (santificatio vestra / ἁγιασμός ὑμῶν—1 Thes. 4:3).  “God does not want himself alone, but also others aside from him” (Deus non solum se vult, sed etiam alia a se).  Just as God makes a likeness to himself (facit sibi simile), so does his will communicate its intellective good to others, according to their limitations (bonum quod [voluntas] habet, aliis communicet, secundum quod possibile est); for all things have their own relative perfection, which is a mere likeness (similitudo) of God’s intellective perfection—hence our will’s incapacity to rest completely in our own intellect.

It is only in some sense that our own will is perfected in our own intellective activity, or in the philosophical life, which is our end as human beings, even as we have a divine end, namely intellection that is unbound to physical limitations.[3] The divine will’s pointing directly to its intellective perfection communicates its good to others by similitude, according to their limitations (volunt[as divina] bonum suum aliiis per similitudinem communicet, secundum quod possibile est).  In this sense alone does God will something other than himself, determining himself unto his intellective indetermination; for God may be said to determine himself in others so that they may find their perfection in some degree or other of divine intellection.  Such is the goodness of the divine intellect “condescending” to us so that we may partake in its way of being, if not by resting, then at least by moderating our will in our intellective activity, as we face our physical limitations.[4]  For man is called to be like God, yet as a man—carrying his daily cross with an honor that is proper to heroes alone.

Now, in his Reply to Obj. 4 of Art. 2, Aquinas speaks of “divine will that does not want anything unless it is by reason of its goodness.  Thus, too, although the divine intellect may be said to be perfect in its very knowing the divine way of being, in that way [essentia] it knows other things” ([voluntas divina] quod nihil aliud vult nisi ratione suae bonitatis. Sicut etiam intellectus divinus, licet sit perfectus ex hoc ipso quod essentiam divinam cognoscit, tamen in ea cognoscit alia).  Thus does Aquinas defend the notion of divine providence, or the necessary bond between the human and the divine.  It is with respect to “others” that God’s will is anything other than his intellect.  For in “others,” who are bound to bodies, the will is never fully satisfied, insofar as the will’s species-relative perfection, or intellective act, is still bound to natural limitations.  It is because of our limitations, then, that we conceived of God’s will, as if it were anything other than God’s boundless or undetermined intellective activity.  It is, moreover, our propensity to project upon God our own limitations, that induces us at times to read Christianity as teaching that God wills evil, if only for the sake of the good.  Aquinas invites us to rise above such a reading, arguing that God’s will enters into our life/world only through others’ wills, as these seek God in his likenesses.   God wants only the perfection of beings insofar as it mirrors God’s own perfection.  So even as God may use evil for good, he does not will the evil into being.  Thus, for instance, in John 9 God does not will natural blindness, but its redemption in/through Christ and yet, only derivatively, or in the respect that the redemption—natural sight—points to God’s own intellective act in which rests the divine will.[5]

NOTES:

[1] Giambattista Vico, Principj di Scienza Nuova (1744), “Of Method,” par. 4; compare par. 3; “Of the Elements,” 9; and “Of Wisdom Generally,” par. 1.

[2] See p. 45 of Nino Langiulli, “A Liberal Education: Knowing What to Resist,” Academic Questions, Fall 2000: 39-45.

[3] On the human being as defined by openness to his divine perfection, see my “Humanisme et mystère dans la philosophie de Pic de la Mirandole,” in Dogma: revue de philosophie et de sciences humaines, Vol. 14 (Winter 2021): 8-38.

[4] Giambattista Vico, Principj di Scienza Nuova (1744), “Of the Elements,” 5.

[5] See my “Law and Natural Right: Notes on John 9’s ‘Parable’ of the Blind Man,” in Voegelin View, Jan. 11, 2022.

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