Section XXVI

Consonant with these are the things which Anselm writes in the book On the Will of God, where, after he has admonished¹ that the will of God is taken in many ways, he immediately continues²:

The will of God, therefore, is sometimes taken in the Scriptures as equivalent to his omnipotent foreknowledge and to the ordinance which sagaciously disposes all things. Whence it is said³: “The Lord has done all things whatsoever he willed”; that is, whatever God ordained from eternity that he would do, he has left nothing unfulfilled. The will of God is also taken according to a certain affection of the mercy of God, as in that place⁴: “God wills all to be saved”; which is to say, he causes⁵ the saints to will that all be saved, which nevertheless he himself wills, that is, he himself has ordained it; but he causes the saints to will it by inspiring love of God and neighbor, by which love prayers are fittingly made in the Church by the saints for schismatics and heretics, and also for Jews and gentiles.

A divine institution is not improperly called the will of God. But the institution of God can be divided into two: into the precepts of the divine Scriptures and into the natural law. Whatever is natural is implanted in man, which⁶ is: “What you would not have done to yourself, do not do to another.” Whoever opposes this does not observe the will of God. The precepts also of the divine Scriptures and the right observances of the Churches are not undeservedly called the will of God; whoever does not obediently acquiesce in them is said to deviate entirely from the will of God, although he is nevertheless in no way able to stray from the order of his foreknowledge.

Whence he concludes⁷:

Behold, the will of God is taken in four ways by the learned doctors, namely: for the knowledge of God; for the will of the saints, who charitably will even the unjust to be saved; for human reason; and fourth, for the divine precepts.

Then, to confirm the things which he had premised, after transcribing these words of Augustine⁸, “Therefore the works of the Lord are great, sought out according to all his wills, so that in a wonderful and ineffable manner nothing is done apart from his will, even that which is done against his will; which would not be done if he did not permit it, nor indeed does he permit it unwillingly, but willingly; nor would he, being good, permit evil to be done, unless, being omnipotent, he could make good from evil,” he immediately adds⁹:

There is also another division of this will. For one can be called efficient, another approving, another conceding, and another permitting. The efficient will in God does whatever it wills; the efficient in man does in act what man both can and wills. The approving is that which approves something, and this pertains both to man and to God. The approving in God is that which wills all to be saved, since, as far as concerns himself, he hinders no one from being saved; indeed, if anyone labors toward this, he approves it. It is evident what the approving will is in man. The conceding is that which concedes that something be done. By a conceding will, moreover, God wills that the man who has not proposed something better should marry a wife.

The permitting will is that which permits something to be done, even though it sometimes displeases. And in this way God is said to will the evils which he permits to be done. Whence it is said¹⁰: “He hardens whom he wills, and upon whom he wills he has mercy.”