(CG 1/072). That God has a Will (Book 1: Of God As He Is In Himself) (Summa Contra Gentiles) (Aquinas, Thomas, St.)

GOD has will inasmuch as He has understanding. But He has under- standing by His essence (Chap. ">XLIV, XLV), and therefore will in like manner.

2. The act of will is the perfection of the agent willing. But the divine being is of itself most perfect, and admits of no superadded perfection (Chap. XXIII): therefore in God the act of His willing is the act of His being.

3. As every agent acts inasmuch as it is in actuality, God, being pure actuality, must act by His essence. But to will is an act of God: therefore God must will by His essence.

4. If will were anything superadded to the divine substance, that substance being complete in being, it would follow that will was something adventitious to it as an accident to a subject; also that the divine substance stood to the divine will as potentiality to actuality; and that there was composition in God: all of which positions have been rejected (Chap. XVI, XVIII, XXIII).