Q&A: What Is God’s Will?
What Is God’s Will?
Question
Hello, when I reflect on the human capacity for choice, I understand it as arising in one of two situations: when I have the option to choose between two actions, one of which seems better to me and the other more pleasant, and I have to overcome the pleasant in favor of the better one (similar to the hiker example you use). Or when I am faced with two equally balanced actions, or I do not know which of them is better (though one could argue that in such a case choice has no real meaning). Since God has no weaknesses and everything is known before Him, I do not understand what it means to say that He wants. If He is subject to some value system, then He will do what is better within that system; and if there is no such system, then it has no meaning whether He performs this act or another. One might perhaps say that even though choice does not have much meaning here, He nevertheless wants what He chose, but that is a novel way of understanding the concept of will. So if so, what is God’s will? Thank you.
Answer
I think that indeed His will stems from His nature (as Ramchal writes, that it is the nature of the good to do good). He has choice, but it is not actualized in practice, because He has no impulses or constraints, and He always does what is most correct and fitting.
And from this it follows that He decided to create the world of His own will, but it is clear from the outset that this is what He would do, because it is the right thing. One could have said that the two possibilities were evenly balanced, and that He could have chosen not to create at all. According to that, this would be an arbitrary will and not the right thing. That seems less plausible to me as a matter of reasoning (but reasoning about such matters is certainly speculative).