Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

You will ask 1° whether will exists in God properly and formally.

I answer affirmatively¹. So it is throughout the Scriptures. Rom., XII, 2: That you may prove what is the will of God. Ibid., IX, 19: Who resisteth his will? Psal. CXIII, 3: All things whatsoever he would, he hath done. These and similar testimonies the holy Fathers unanimously understand in the proper sense.

The reason is that it belongs to any being whatsoever to will and love its own perfection and the preservation of its own being, in such a way that it tends to acquire the good which it does not have, and takes complacency and rests in the good which it has². Now in an intellectual being this inclination is called will; for will is an inclination toward the good as apprehended by the intellect. Therefore to God, the first being and supremely intellectual, there belongs a will by which his own being and his own goodness are pleasing to himself. Add that will is an unqualifiedly simple perfection, and therefore is not to be denied to God.

You will ask 2° whether the divine will is virtually distinguished from its own volition.

I answer negatively³, because, as we have already said concerning the divine intellect and intellection, only those things are virtually distinguished in God which are equivalent to several created things distinct by formal object and belonging to diverse lines; but will and volition in God have the same formal object, nor do they belong to diverse lines. Likewise, if the will were virtually distinguished from the volition, and retained toward it the character of a potency, it would be conceived as perfectible and actuable by it: and consequently it would not be conceived as pure act.

And so the divine will, with respect to the volition, does not have the character of a potency, except according to our manner of conceiving divine things by analogy to created things. It has, however, the character of a potency and principle with respect to the effect proceeding from it or produced by it; because it is not related to that effect as something actuable and perfectible by it, but on the contrary, as actuating and perfecting it.

You will ask 3° whether God wills, not only himself, but also things other than himself.

I answer affirmatively⁴, because a natural thing has not only a natural inclination with respect to its own good, so as to acquire it when it does not have it, or so as to rest in it when it has it, but also so as to diffuse its own good into other things insofar as this is possible: whence we see that every agent, insofar as it is in act and perfect, makes something like itself. It belongs, therefore, to the nature of will, that one should communicate to others the good which one has, and this belongs especially to the divine will, from which all perfection is derived. Therefore God wills himself and things other than himself, but himself as end, and other things as ordered to the end, insofar as it befits the divine goodness that other things also should participate in it. Hence Scripture, Thess., IV, 3: This is the will of God, your sanctification. And Psal. CXIII, 3: Whatsoever he would, he hath done; now he made things other than himself.

You will ask 4° what the formal object, both motive and terminative, of the divine will may be.

I answer that it is the divine goodness alone⁵; creatures, however, are its material object. For that is the formal object, both motive and terminative, of any potency, by which it is moved of itself and by reason of itself, and which it attains of itself and by reason of itself. But the divine goodness alone is that by which the divine will is moved of itself and by reason of itself, and that which it attains of itself and by reason of itself. The major, therefore, is the very notion of the formal object, both motive and terminative. — Proof of the minor. God, in every act of willing, is his own end to himself; for the Lord hath made all things for himself, says Scripture, Prov., XVI, 4. But in those things which we will only for the sake of an end, the whole reason for moving is the end: thus he who wills to take a bitter potion for the sake of health, health is that which alone moves his will. But if it is the whole reason for moving, it is also the reason for terminating, since there must be a proportion between the motive object and the terminative object.