87. God's Unchangeable Will and Divine Necessity
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Main Topics #
Article 7: The Immutability of God’s Will #
Central Question: Is God’s will changeable?
The Problem: Scripture seems to indicate God’s will changes (Genesis 6: “I repent that I made man”; Jeremiah 18: God threatens destruction but relents if the nation repents).
Key Distinction: Willing a change is fundamentally different from changing one’s will
- To will a change (e.g., willing meat to cook from raw to cooked) does NOT involve changing one’s will
- Changing one’s will requires beginning to will something that was not willed before
- This presupposes a change either in knowledge or in the disposition/substance of the one willing
Two Ways One Begins to Will Something New:
- Something becomes good for you that was not good before (requires change in your condition)
- Example: Cold medicine becomes good for you when you become cold, though it wasn’t good before
- You discover that something is good for you that you were ignorant of (requires change in knowledge)
- Example: Discovering that logic or Thomas Aquinas is good for you through new understanding
Divine Immutability: Since God’s substance and knowledge are entirely unchangeable, His will must be entirely unchangeable. Nothing new can become good for God, nor can God acquire new knowledge.
Solution to Scripture: Repentance is spoken of God metaphorically. When God destroys what He made (the flood), this mirrors the effect of human repentance, but God’s will itself does not change. God can eternally will to make something and later will to destroy it without changing His will.
Article 8: Divine Will and Necessity #
Central Question: Does God’s unchangeable will impose necessity on all things willed?
The Problem: If God’s will is unchangeable and cannot be impeded, doesn’t everything become absolutely necessary? This threatens human freedom and contingency in the world.
Inadequate Solution: Some argue that things produced through necessary causes are necessary, while things produced through contingent causes are contingent. Thomas rejects this as insufficient.
Thomas’s Solution: The efficacy of divine causality is so powerful that it extends not only to what comes about but to how it comes about.
God’s Will and Causality:
- God wills some things to come about necessarily (and prepares necessary causes for them)
- God wills some things to come about contingently (and prepares contingent causes for them)
- God even wills some things to happen by chance
- This is not an impediment to God’s will; rather, contingency is what God wills
Why Secondary Causes Don’t Explain the Distinction:
- If contingency were explained only by defects in secondary causes, this would be outside God’s intention and will (an “inconvenience”)
- The distinction between necessary and contingent effects reflects God’s efficacious will directly, not merely the weakness of secondary causes
Analogy of the Poet: Thomas compares God’s relation to the world to that of a poet to his play. The poet arranges some events to happen by necessity and others by chance, yet all are within the poet’s artistic design. Similarly, God wills some things necessarily and some contingently for the perfection and order of the universe.
Conditional vs. Absolute Necessity:
- Conditional necessity: “If God wills something, it will be” is necessarily true
- But this does not make all things absolutely necessary
- Things have such necessity as God wills them to have: either absolute or conditional only
Key Arguments #
On Divine Immutability (Article 7) #
Structure:
- The will follows from understanding
- Beginning to will something new requires:
- A change in condition (something becomes good), OR
- A change in knowledge (you discover something is good)
- God’s substance and knowledge are unchangeable
- Therefore, God’s will must be unchangeable
On Necessity and Contingency (Article 8) #
Objection: If nothing can resist God’s will, everything must be necessary
Response:
- The efficacy of a cause extends to HOW effects come about, not just THAT they come about
- A weak cause (like a seed) produces weak or defective effects
- God’s will is infinitely efficacious
- Therefore, God not only produces effects but produces them in the very way He wills them
- God wills some things to be necessary and some contingent
- Conclusion: God’s unchangeable will is perfectly compatible with contingent effects
Important Definitions #
- Mutability/Immutability: The capacity to change or the absolute inability to change. God’s will is entirely immutable because it depends on nothing external.
- Efficacy: The power of a cause to produce effects in a particular way. Divine efficacy is so great that it determines not only what comes about but how it comes about.
- Conditional Necessity: The necessity of a conditional statement itself (“If God wills X, then X will be”) as distinguished from absolute necessity of the consequent.
- Per Se/Per Accidens: Essential vs. accidental. A thing is judged by what belongs to it essentially, not accidentally.
- Secondary Causes: Intermediate causes in the created order, as distinguished from God as the first and universal cause.
Examples & Illustrations #
On Willing Change vs. Changing Will #
The Steak: I will the meat to change from raw to cooked by putting it on the grill. But my will itself does not change—I have the same intention throughout. The change is in the thing willed, not in my willing.
The Sandcastle: Someone can will to make a sandcastle intending all along to knock it down afterward. Making it and destroying it are parts of one unified will, not evidence of a changed will.
The Father and the Car: A father tells his son at one age “you cannot use the car” because of his inexperience. Later he says “you can use it” because the son is now ready. Different commands at different times do not indicate a change in the father’s will, but rather a single rational will accommodating to changing circumstances.
On Contingency and Divine Causality #
Seeds in the Garden: The same sun shines on seeds in the garden, yet some germinate and flower while others do not. The sun’s power is not impeded; rather, defects in secondary causes (the soil, the seed itself) account for the different outcomes. Yet God’s will is never impeded by such defects.
Lazarus and Lower Causes: According to lower natural causes, Lazarus will not rise from the dead. But according to the first cause (God’s will), Lazarus will rise. God wills both—that according to lower causes he will not rise, and that according to divine power he will rise. Both are true and both are willed by God.
Prophecy and Future Contingents: God tells Ezekiel to tell a man to “dispose your house because you will die and not live.” Yet this does not come about because it is otherwise in God’s eternal will. The prophet announces what would occur according to lower causes, but God’s will differs from this conditional announcement.
On Human Experience of Chance #
Meeting by Chance: If you had not been in a certain place at a certain time, you would not have met someone who changed your entire life. Neither of you went there to meet the other, yet the chance meeting was within God’s providential order. Chance events are real but are still encompassed by God’s will.
Finding a Rare Book: A friend goes to dinner in Quebec and the dinner plans fall through. He wanders into a bookshop looking to pass time and finds a rare, out-of-print book everyone had been seeking. This seems entirely by chance, yet it was within God’s willing.
Notable Quotes #
“It is one thing to change your will, and it’s another thing to will the change of some things.” - Thomas Aquinas
“For me to will a change is not the same thing as to change my will, is it?” - Berquist’s clarification
“God’s will is so efficacious, that not only what he wants to take place does take place, right? But also that it takes place in the way he wants it to take place.” - Berquist
“Variety is the spice of life.” - Common saying (Berquist notes this contrasts with God, for whom there is no change)
“God changes the sentence, but not his counsel.” - Gregory the Great (cited by Thomas)
“Put down your pipe and smoke it.” - Berquist’s emphatic restatement of Thomas’s point about divine efficacy
Questions Addressed #
How can God’s will be unchangeable if Scripture says He repents? #
Answer: Repentance is spoken of God metaphorically based on the similarity of effects. When God makes something and later destroys it, this resembles human repentance in effect. But God’s will does not change; rather, God eternally wills both the making and the destroying without any temporal succession in His willing itself.
How can God’s unchangeable will be compatible with contingent events? #
Answer: God’s efficacious will extends to determining how things come about. God wills some things to happen necessarily and prepares necessary causes for them. God wills other things to happen contingently and prepares contingent causes for them. Contingency is not an impediment to God’s will; it is what God wills.
If God’s will cannot be impeded, doesn’t everything become necessary? #
Answer: No. The fact that nothing can impede God’s will means that effects come about in the exact way God wills them—some necessarily, some contingently. God’s will is so efficacious that it determines the mode of causation (necessary or contingent), not merely the outcome.
Why do we need conditional necessity? #
Answer: Conditional necessity allows us to maintain that “If God wills something, it will be” is necessarily true, while not making all things absolutely necessary. The truth of the conditional statement is necessary, but the consequent may be contingent.
Theological Implications #
- Divine Providence: God’s unchangeable will encompasses all events, including contingent human choices and chance occurrences
- Human Freedom: Contingency is real because God wills contingent causes to operate contingently
- Prayer: Prayer is not meant to change God’s will (which is unchangeable) but to align ourselves with what God wills
- Scriptural Metaphor: Anthropomorphic language in Scripture (repentance, anger, changed mind) must be understood metaphorically
- Determinism vs. Indeterminism: Thomas avoids both extreme determinism (making everything necessary) and the view that contingency escapes God’s causality