in which they subsist are those that change a thing’s substance. As for a precise understanding of God’s will, this belongs to the knowledge reserved for the elite. These men sought to convey to people a meaning of will other than its familiar, intelligible meaning, explicitly affirmed by revelation—a meaning the general public cannot understand and whose modality human intellects cannot determine. They made this a fundamental principle of the revealed religion and declared anyone who did not uphold it an unbeliever.

The proper scope of scholars in this matter is to establish through demonstration that there is a will whose modality cannot be specified. It is not to be described as an eternal will from which something that comes into being necessarily follows, nor as a will that itself comes into being, like that observed in the created world. Rather, it is a will whose modality human intellects fall short of comprehending, just as they fall short of comprehending the modality of all the other attributes with which He has described Himself. For whenever their modality is specified, they come to resemble created attributes whose modality is specified. All these attributes must therefore be affirmed on the basis of demonstrative proofs, without specifying their modality.”

I say:

As for its being a will unlike the will of created beings, this must indeed be affirmed of it and of all the other attributes. This is not peculiar to will. Just as there is nothing like the Lord Himself, the same holds for His attributes as for His Essence.

But no one disputes the mere denial of such likeness. The substance of his words is to refrain from pronouncing on whether His will is eternal or comes into being, rather than to explain how the difficulty is resolved, just as he did with the question of knowledge.