The will of God is not manifest at a moment of decision in time, for God transcends creation: God is not subject to creation. God’s knowledge (and therefore will) is not discursive (See Summa Theologiae, I, 14, 7). What God wills is voluntary not involuntary.Vico:
Agreed, thats why he can’t act if voluntude. He doesn’t have the capability of decieding between two states of distinct being.
Let me rephrase; he cannot do what is a contridiction to his nature (and thus bring him to a lower state of existence) by necessity. Thats the only necessary constraint in him (other than definitional contridiction). That be so, he shouldn’t be necessitated in acting in any other way. But modal collapse demands he does all by necessity, including creation (which does not participate at all in his goodness, otherwise he wouldn’t be highest perfection in and of himself), therefore theres a contridiction here.
If God cannot possibly be in different states (which is the requirement for voluntude) ontologically prior to an effect than that must mean that he acts of necessity. How can one say that something isn’t necessary if one cannot be in any other way even in theory? Especially if we remove ourselves from temporality an speak ontologically. If God cannot ever be different then he must act by necessity.
Are you saying that God does not need to create the universe since He is perfect yet He apparently did?
Jesus died for you and for everyone else. That must mean that Jesus loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.
It is not necessary to be in different states to exercise will (volition), rather that would be needed to make a discursive decision about something temporally, which would be an anthropomorphism if applied to the Holy Trinity.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm
Yes, but I take it a step further. God cannot need to do anything, but he falls into modal collapse so therefore everything he does is of necessity, which is of course contradictory. Thus, God cannot exist.
I wouldn’t think so, no.
Ehh… I’m hesitant to wave this away as a misunderstanding on the basis of temporality. The reason is captured in my recent response to Gorgias:
Sure, the example is one set in time, but the point is universal, I think, and irrelevant of setting. What is necessary cannot be any other way, what is voluntary theoretically and ontologically could be. As such, if your state of being must be A not due to supposition but by your very nature, then it is of necessity you are in state of being A, and as such there is no voluntude here.
God is limited only by the constraints He has put on Himself. The same issue can be considered with those in heaven that cannot sin – saying that the glorified in heaven act rightly, but unwillingly would be misleading.
Right, but are those constraints necessary or voluntary themselves? If they’re necessary, then we could say it is a must according to the nature of God. But if it is, and we say its necessary to create, I think we end up back where we started, I think.
St. Thomas Aquinas addressed the question in S.T. Part 1, Q19, Article 3. Whether whatever God wills He wills necessarily?Vico:
Right, but are those constraints necessary or voluntary themselves? If they’re necessary, then we could say it is a must according to the nature of God. But if it is, and we say its necessary to create, I think we end up back where we started, I think.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm
Vico:
Thats exactly right! Thats why modal collapse shows God can’t exist, because it contradicts this very passage! Indeed, it is so that God need not will anything other than himself if he was pure act, but if modal collapse is correct, then he must will everything necessarily by his nature. But thats a contridiction, as we might agree.
I was paraphrasing. Apologies for the misuse of the quotation marks.
Will follows from intelligence. To be voluntary does not require a choice, therefore no change is needed.
For an action to be necessary it can never be of a different state then the state it finds itself in. Sure, you can voluntarily will the necessary, but the necessary cares not if you will it or not. It happens nonetheless. The real question is whether or not the act of creation was necessary or unnecessary (completely voluntary). If you say it was necessary, I’m sorry, but you are simply wrong (note premise 6 and 7 of my argument against God), for creation can’t be necessary unless it is demanded by the nature of God, which is highest perfection. Thus, it needs to be unnecessary. But in order for something to be an unnecessary state of existence we must acknowledge that it therefore could’ve been of a different, opposite state of existence. This is necessarily true, as the state of not creating must be different then the state of creating. As such, there is only one solution, which was the one I give above.
God wills both what is necessary (when God will his own goodness) and what is not necessary.
Sure, but if you don’t accept my argument above everything he chooses and acts becomes necessary, and not by supposition but by nature alone, which is a contridiction.
You wrote before: “As such, the actuality of a state of constant creation must be found in God too, who is actuality.”
To this, I might reply that he does choose not from time in any sense but nonetheless ontologically (as the first cause). And given the emencity of the power of this God, and given my argument, because what is true is him in his state, then were he to become in another it would not be as with beginning or end of any state, but as if he was always in that opposing state (as God dictates how there is a universe through his will, yet if he willed no universe, perhaps it could be said that he eternally willed it too as there would never be a way to deduce beginning or end to the beginningless or endless).
When the monarchy of the Father is expressed then we say the Father is the first in number of persons in the Holy Trinity, and this is non-temporal.Vico:
To this, I might reply that he does choose not from time in any sense but nonetheless ontologically (as the first cause). And given the emencity of the power of this God, and given my argument, because what is true is him in his state, then were he to become in another it would not be as with beginning or end of any state, but as if he was always in that opposing state (as God dictates how there is a universe through his will, yet if he willed no universe, perhaps it could be said that he eternally willed it too as there would never be a way to deduce beginning or end to the beginningless or endless).