Archive for June 3rd, 2008
1. Most freely: for as liberty is essential to every will, so it is chiefly proper to the Divinity, because it is a will especially: yet God wills good necessarily with a necessity of Immutability, but not with a necessity of coaction: for he is necessarily and naturally Good, and that which he once willed, he always wills immutably, and yet freely.
2. God wills efficaciously: for no man resists, nor can resist his will. Dan. 4.32. Rom. 9:19. Voluntas Dei semper impletur aut de nobis aut a’ Deo in nobis. Augustine.
Will is taken:
First properly.
1. For a faculty or power of the soul whereby we will; so we say, there are these faculties in the soul, the understanding, and the will. So for that faculty of willing which is in God, so it is one with God’s Essence.
2. For the act of his willing, called Volitio: so it is one with his Essence. For as he is Eternal and Immutable, so is also his will.
Secondly, Metonymically.
For the Object or thing willed, so John 6. “This is the will of my Father,” that is, that which he wills and has decreed. “Thy will be done,” 1 Thess. 4.3. So we say, It is the Princes will, that is, that which the Prince wills; he wills his own glory chiefly.
God’s will is his Essence, whereby he freely wills good, and nills evil: or it is a faculty whereby God chooses all and only good, and refuses all and only evil. Voluntas in Deo nihil alind est, quam Deus volens. Zanchi. de natura Dei. L.3. c. 4. Quest. 1.