The case is similar with the distinction almost everywhere drawn between the divine will as absolute and as conditioned. It is clear that on this view ability is still made greater than will, because in the former no such distinction is drawn; and there arises a gradation, so that of what God can do some things He wills absolutely, some under conditions, and still others not at all. But it is by no means the case that God wills some things absolutely and others conditionally; just as with regard to every event there is something of which one can say, if this were not then that event would not be; so with regard to every individual thing—the fact that it exists and that it exists in this way—we can say that God wills it conditionally, because everything is conditioned by something else. But that whereby something else is conditioned is itself conditioned by the divine will; indeed in such a way that the divine will upon which the conditioning rests, and the divine will upon which the conditioned rests is not different in each case, but one only and the same; it is the divine will embracing the whole framework of mutually conditioning finite being: and this naturally is the absolute will, because nothing conditions it. In this way everything individual would be willed by God conditionally, but the whole willed absolutely as a unity. On the other hand, if for once we take an individual out of the order, and relate it so to the divine will, we shall have to say that each individual existing for itself, so far as we regard it not as conditioned by, but as co-conditioning the whole, is so fully willed by God as what it is, that everything else must be so, and cannot be otherwise than as follows from its action; which is as much as to say that it is absolutely willed by God. In this respect, therefore, it can be said that every individual, so far as it must be affected by the rest, is also only conditionally willed by God; but, of course, not as though on that account it were any the less willed, or any the less came to reality. Everything, however, so far as it is itself effective, and in various ways conditions other things, is absolutely willed by God.

But the whole idea of the divine omnipotence appears most endangered, when an active and an inactive, and a free and a necessary, divine will are set one over against the other. The necessary will would be related to what God wills in virtue of His essence, the free to that which, so far as His essence is concerned, He could just as well not will;⁶ where it is assumed that it does not belong to His essence to reveal Himself. Thus by means of the necessary will God wills Himself, and by means of the free will He wills what is other than Himself. But a ‘self-willing’ of God is always a most awkward formula, and almost inevitably raises the hair-splitting question whether, just as the world exists by reason of His free will, so also God exists because, by reason of His necessary will, He wills Himself, or whether He wills Himself because He is. Or, to express it rather differently, whether this self-willing is more in the way of self-preservation, or more in the way of self-approval, or (if both are taken together) after the manner of self-love.⁷ Now since self-preservation can scarcely be thought of as a real will unless there is something to be striven for or averted,⁸ and self-approval almost necessarily implies a divided consciousness, it is easily seen that this self-willing can mean nothing but the very existence of God posited under the form of will. But this, which is in God purely inward and related solely to Himself, can never come into our religious self-consciousness. In any case, therefore, this necessary will of God, as in no way belonging here, would fall under speculative theology. Moreover, it seems that this contrast cannot be applied to God at all, and what has been brought under the contrasted heads respectively is not really separable. For where such a contrast exists the necessary must be unfree, and the free be grounded in no necessity, and so arbitrary. Each, however, is an imperfection; and consequently this contrast has its place solely in that existence in which each being is co-determined by the rest. We must therefore think of nothing in God as necessary without at the same time positing it as free, nor as free unless at the same time it is necessary. Just as little, however, can we think of God’s willing Himself, and God’s willing the world, as separated the one from the other. For if He wills Himself, He wills Himself as Creator and Sustainer, so that in willing Himself, willing the world is already included; and if He wills the world, in it He wills His eternal and ever-present omnipotence, wherein willing Himself is included; that is to say, the necessary will is included in the free, and the free in the necessary. Obviously, too, there is nothing in the way in which God comes into our religious self-consciousness which corresponds to this contrast, and it lacks dogmatic content.

And finally as to the contrast between the active and inactive divine will: it first of all contradicts the generally recognized proposition that the divine will extends no further than divine ability.⁹ For how should a true and real will be inactive unless it lacked the ability? But it is to be noted that the one all-embracing divine will is identical with the eternal omnipotence; and if then, as eternal, it is timeless, the content of no definite time can quite correspond with it, and so from this point of view the divine will is always inactive. But it is also always active, because there is no fraction of time which does not pass in fulfilment of it, and what seems to resist or repress the divine will is always simply co-operating in its temporal fulfilment.¹⁰ If, then, we hold this fast and distinguish between will and command, it is quite unnecessary to deal with the idea of a precedent and a consequent will, expressions which again suggest the appearance of a change in the will of God.

POSTSCRIPT: THE INDEPENDENCE OF GOD

If the feeling of absolute dependence comprises a reference to divine omnipotence, it is no longer necessary to bring out the independence of God as a special attribute. For if one remains at all true to the derivation of the word, it is, as the opposite of that dependence in which we find ourselves, simply a negative attribute and, as it were, a shadow-picture of omnipotence, and only states that God has no foundation or cause of His being outside Himself, which coincides with the scholastic ‘aseitas,’ virtually ‘existence-from-self.’ If, now, this be changed into a formula of quite similar content, namely, that in relation to God there can be no question of a ground, one sees at once how this is already completely contained in our two main conceptions, eternity and omnipotence. But, of course, the term independence is dealt with in very different ways. Some include in the idea that God is Lord over all.¹¹ But Lordship is connected with independence only on the presupposition that the independent is at the same time in need of something, for otherwise one can be completely independent without having even the slightest Lordship. Thus if the divine attributes are to be separated at all, this combination is not practicable. Then if ‘indebted to no one’ has only a moral sense, and denies the applicability of the conception of obligation in relation to God, the conception is thereby divided, and there is, according to the usual procedure, a physical and a moral independence. About the latter we have nothing to say here; and since ‘to be Lord over all’ can be only an expression of omnipotence (if, that is, we leave out in advance the moral consideration which here too enters, that God as Lord cannot be obligated, i.e. can stand under no law), we have nothing left but the above-mentioned ‘existence-from-self’ of God—a speculative formula which, in the dogmatic sphere, we can only convert into the rule that there is nothing in God for which a determining cause is to be posited outside God. But this is so clearly defined in our first explanation,¹² that it is unnecessary to bring it up specially here.

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Footnotes

1. Statements such as that of Basil, hom. I. in hexaëm.: τὸν τοῦ παντὸς τούτου δημιουργὸν οὐχ ἐνὶ κόσμῳ σύμμετρον ἔχειν τὴν ποιητικὴν δύναμιν, ἀλλ’ εἰς τὸ ἀπειροπλάσιον ὑπερβαίνουσαν, we must explain by the limits of contemporary knowledge of the universe, in contrast to which we have already arrived at the ἀπειροπλάσιον. ↩

2. Abelard rightly says, Introd. iii. 5: Potest, quod convenit, non convenit quod praetermittit, ergo id tantum facere potest, quod quandoque facit. Cf. August., Enchirid. 24: Neque enim ob aliud veraciter vocatur omnipotens, nisi quoniam quicquid vult potest. ↩

3. Joh. Damasc., d. fid. orth. i. 8, calls God indeed δύναμιν οὐδενὶ μέτρῳ γνωριζομένην, μόνῳ τῷ οἰκείῳ βουλήματι μετρουμένην. But this is only meant to bring out one side, for he says, i. 13: πάντα μὲν ὅσα θέλει δύναται, οὐχ ὅσα δὲ δύναται θέλει. ↩

4. This is true of all such formulæ as Deus absoluta sua potentiâ multa potest, quæ non vult nec forte unquam volet; or Nunquam tot et tanta efficit Deus, quia semper plura et majora efficere possit (cf. Gerh., loc. theol. i. pp. 132 f.). ↩

5. Cf. § 38. 1 and § 45, Postscript. ↩

6. Gerh., loc. th. iii. p. 203: Ex necessitate naturae vult quae de se ipso vult, nulla re sive extra se sive intra se permotus. Libere vult, quae de creaturis vult, quae poterat et velle et nolle. ↩

7. Wegscheider, Instit., § 67: Voluntas necessaria, i.e. actus voluntatis quae e scientia necessaria promanare dicitur, amor nimirum quo Deus … se ipsum complectatur necesse est. ↩

8. Many, of course, still describe the divine will in this way, e.g. Mosheim, Th. dogm., p. 277: actus appetendi quae bona sunt et aversandi quae mala sunt. ↩

9. Cf. Gerh., loc. th. i. p. 154: Praeter voluntatem non indiget aliqua potentia. ↩

10. On this are also based the formulae of Augustine, to which we must always come back, Enchirid. 26: Omnipotentis voluntas semper invicta est— nec nisi volens quicquam facit, et omnia quaecunque vult facit. 27: dum tamen credere non cogamur aliquid omnipotentem Deum voluisse fieri, factumque non esse. ↩

11. Reinhard’s Dogm., p. 106: Independentia est illud attributum, quo nemini quicquam debet, et ipse solus est omnium rerum dominus.—Joh. Damasc., de orth. fid. i. 19, can scarcely have regarded αὐτεξούσιος (which, for the most part, corresponds to independent) as forming one predicate together with αὐτοκρατής and ἀνενδεής. ↩

12. Cf. § 4, 4. ↩