The divisions and explanations of the divine will which we know to have been customary and received among the Greek Fathers and writers occur also among the Latin doctors of the Church themselves, although turned somewhat differently and, according to each one’s genius and ability, either more elegantly proposed or more obscurely declared. For the felicity of the Greeks in distinctly perceiving and clearly expressing the matters brought into question is more than once very considerably lacking in the Latin writers of the Middle Ages.
Thus blessed Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who in an ancient epitaph1 is called “bright in intellect, a profound knower of Scripture,” when, in the little book which he entitled On the Will, he comes to those divisions of the will which he had promised2 to explain in the work On the Harmony of Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Free Choice, writes these things among others3:
One will can be called efficient, another approving, another permitting. I call that efficient which effects what it wills, and which would effect it if it could; approving, however, that which approves what exists, and which would approve it if it existed; and permitting, that which permits that to exist which it is said to will if it exists, and which would permit it if it existed. The efficient is indeed also approving and permitting; the approving, moreover, is also permitting; but the merely permitting can rightly be called neither efficient nor approving. According to the efficient will it was said4: “The Lord has done all things whatsoever he willed.” But according to the approving will it is said5 that God wills every man to be saved. For God approves, and it pleases him concerning all the just, because they are just, that they be saved; and it would nevertheless please him concerning the unjust, if they were just, that they be saved. For what was said is such as if it were said: God makes no one unjust, but each one has from himself the injustice whereby he is condemned; and therefore it cannot be said to displease God if he is just and is saved, nor can God be said to oppose the salvation of anyone, but to approve if there is one who is saved. But according to the permitting will it is said6 that he hardens whom he wills, because he permits him to be hardened; for what was premised7, “he has mercy upon whom he wills,” was said according to the efficient will.
This more subtle disputation of Anselm, when duly compared with the things which we have reported from the Greek writers, demonstrates not obscurely that the efficient and permitting will in Anselm corresponds to the will which the latter call the second, consequent, from condescension, by accident, mixed, and almost compelled; but that the approving will in Anselm corresponds to the will which the same writers name good pleasure, first, archetypal, pure, and antecedent.
He himself mentions these endowments of that approving will and enumerates its ornaments: I. that it is a true will properly inhering in God; II. that it is universal in amplitude and embraces no less those who are condemned because they persevere in impiety than those who are endowed with beatitude because they are just; III. that it is an efficacious and active will, since it opposes the salvation of no one and frees all from the necessity of perishing. Men, however, would be subject to this most miserable necessity unless they were prepared and raised up by the benefits of the approving divine will and were made such as could aspire to the liberty of the sons of God.