Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

I suppose 1° that God necessarily wills His own goodness¹; because, since He is necessarily willing in act, and in His goodness shines forth every note of goodness without any defect, He cannot not love it.

Hence, when the holy Fathers and St. Thomas sometimes say that God loves Himself freely, they understand this of freedom from coercion, because He is compelled to it by nothing extrinsic, but not of freedom from necessity.

I suppose 2° that God enjoys the greatest freedom toward creatures. Thus Scripture everywhere. Psal. XCIII, 1: The God of revenges hath acted freely. Rom., IX, 18: He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth. Ephes., I, 11: Who worketh all things according to the counsel of his will. I Cor., XII, 11: The Spirit dividing as he will.

The reason is, first, because freedom of choice is the greatest perfection, involving of itself no imperfection; for the power of sinning does not belong to the nature of freedom, but is its blemish, as we shall say elsewhere. Therefore it is impious to deny it to God.

2° God wills things other than Himself insofar as they are ordered to His goodness, as to an end². But those things which are for an end, we who will the end do not will of necessity, unless they be such that without them the end cannot exist. Therefore, since God's goodness is perfect, and can exist without other things — for no perfection accrues to Him from other things — it follows that His willing things other than Himself is not necessary absolutely, but that He extends Himself to them by a free and gratuitous freedom, communicating to them His goodness, not that it may profit Him, but that it may be well with them.

But there is a difficulty, and a most intricate one, as to what constitutes the free act of God. For it is difficult to conceive how the freedom of God stands together with His immutability, the rights of each being preserved. For either the free act could have been absent from God, or it could not: if the first, how is God immutable? if the second, how is He free? for it belongs to the nature of a free act that it be able to be absent. Behold the sum of the difficulty which torments the minds of theologians.

Before all else, this must always be kept before one's eyes: that divine freedom is not, as human freedom is, an indifference of a power to diverse acts of willing and not-willing, but is the indifference of one most simple and most pure act to diverse objects (compare article I of this dissertation), such that by this one and the same most simple act it brings about the being or non-being of creatures, this or that, and insofar as it brings about being, it is called volition, insofar as it brings about non-being, it is called nolition. This, I say, keep in mind; for from this flows the solution of the knot, if indeed it can be called a solution. Therefore

Dico: The free act of God is nothing other than His necessary act insofar as it expresses a relation or termination not necessary to creatures.

Proof 1° from the principles of St. Thomas. The Holy Doctor, in Contra Gentiles I, ch. 82, says thus: «The will of God by one and the same act wills Himself and other things. But His relation to Himself is necessary and natural; His relation to other things is according to a certain fittingness — not indeed necessary and natural, nor violent or unnatural, but voluntary.» Likewise elsewhere. By these words is disclosed the distinction already assigned between divine and human freedom, on which the truth of our assertion is founded. For thus I argue: According to St. Thomas and the truth of the matter, divine freedom does not consist in the indifference of a power to several acts, as human freedom does, but in the indifference of one most simple act to diverse objects — which act, simple in itself, is virtually manifold, necessary and free under different aspects. Insofar as it is terminated at the divine being, it is necessary; insofar as it is terminated at creatures, and is virtually distinct from itself as terminated at the divine being, it is free: under which aspect, remaining unmoved in itself, it can be terminated at this or that, at the being or non-being of creatures, and as it is terminated at being, it is called volition, as it is terminated at non-being, it is called nolition; and all this on account of the supreme actuality, simplicity, unlimitedness, and eminence of the divine act. Therefore the note of the necessary and the free in God must be placed in the same act according to its diverse terminations.

Proof 2° by another reason. For the constitutive of a free act in God two things are required: first, that it be something intrinsic to God and divine, since God's free act is vital and immanent; second, that it be able in some sense to fail, for it belongs to the nature of a free act that it be able in some sense not to be. But, by constituting the free act of God in His necessary act — not insofar as it connotes the divine goodness, under which aspect it is necessary, but insofar as it connotes and is terminated not necessarily at creatures — these two things are had: 1° it is had that it be something intrinsic and divine; for the necessary act of God, identified with God Himself, is God Himself; 2° it is also had that it be something in some sense defectible; because, although this act is entitatively necessary, yet reduplicatively and formally, insofar as it is terminated at creatures, it is not necessary, since these could have not been, and were they to fail, this connotation or termination would fail. Therefore.

But immediately the entanglement of the knot recurs, which our manner of speaking does not seem to resolve. For either that non-necessary termination to creatures, in which we place the freedom of God, is something intrinsic to God and intrinsically defectible, or it is not. If the first, then God is intrinsically defectible, and not supremely simple; if the second, then He is not intrinsically free. And thus the knot remains unresolved.

To this difficulty, which I confess to be the gravest and almost the only one, the response of the Thomists is not single.

The older and more common [response] in the school of St. Thomas, and more conformable to his principles, is that this termination — understanding it as active — is intrinsic, since it is the divine act itself compared and terminated to creatures, and is defectible, not indeed intrinsically and by reason of itself or of some other intrinsic thing, but extrinsically, by reason of the defectible thing willed, so that the same act, unmoved in itself, as I have already said, with no intrinsic reality in itself changed or defectible, could have produced or not produced creatures, and could have ordered and disposed them variously. And therefore the constitutive of divine freedom, according to what it imports in recto, is something intrinsic, in itself indefectible, namely the divine act itself, entitatively necessary and immutable; but according to what it imports in obliquo, is something extrinsic and defectible, namely the connoted creatures, which are defectible.

Nor, in order that God be called intrinsically free, is it required that something intrinsic to Him be able to fail insofar as it is intrinsic, but it suffices that one and the same act, unmoved and indefectible in itself, could have differently changed creatures. Which is proved: 1° because, as I repeat again, divine freedom is not the indifference of a volitional power to diverse acts, but the indifference of one most pure and most simple act to diverse objects. Therefore by this very fact He is judged free, in that, unchanged in Himself, by reason of His eminence and supreme dominion over creatures, He can change them.

2° When for an intrinsic denomination there is required not the intrinsic form alone, but also an extrinsic connotation, that form denominates through the mere positing of the extrinsic connotation, without any change on its own part: thus God in time is denominated creator and lord through an eternal intrinsic form, namely His omnipotence, the whole change occurring in time remaining on the side of creatures. And this is common to every comparative term, that, in order to be said to fail and to stand differently to another, it suffices that this other be changed. Therefore, in order that God's act be free, and could have stood differently toward creatures, it need not have been changed in itself, by losing or receiving something, but it suffices that, unchanged in itself, it could have changed creatures differently.

[And this seems to be the constant and open doctrine of St. Thomas, not only in the place cited, but even more clearly and repeatedly elsewhere. For thus he says, here q. 19, a. 3, o: «Since the goodness of God is perfect, and can be without other things, since no perfection accrues to Him from other things, it follows that His willing things other than Himself is not necessary absolutely, and yet it is necessary from supposition; for supposing that He wills, He cannot not will, because His will cannot be changed.» And in the same place, ad 5: «The divine will, which of itself has necessity, determines itself to the thing willed, to which it has a non-necessary relation.» Likewise q. 23 de Veritate, a. 4, o: «That the divine willing has necessity on the part of the one willing and of the act itself is undoubtedly true; for the action of God is His essence, which is agreed to be eternal. Hence this is not what is in question, but whether the willing itself has necessity by comparison to the thing willed.» And here again, q. 19, a. 3, ad 4: «That God does not will of necessity something of those things which He wills, does not arise from a defect of the divine will, but from a defect which pertains to the thing willed according to its own nature; because, namely, it is such that without it the perfect goodness of God can exist: which defect indeed follows upon every created good.»]