Likewise, they have described the power they affirm in terms that make it impossible for it to be power at all. Yet power is a condition of creation. If they negate a condition of creation, creation itself is negated, and He is no longer a Creator. Thus, what they attribute to the Creator contradicts His being a Creator; it is not a necessary consequence of His being a Creator. Yet they have made it a necessary consequence rather than a contradiction.

As for the will, they ascribe to it three necessary characteristics, all of which contradict its being a will. They say that it exists without anything willed by it existing—indeed, that this has always been the case—and then what it wills comes into existence without any change in the will itself. The invalidity of this is self-evident to reason. For when an agent wills to act, what preceded was a resolve to act and an intention to do so at a future time, not a will to perform the act immediately. Rather, when he acts, there must be a will to act at that moment.

Hence the saying:

“Prior volition is resolve; concurrent volition is intention.”

It is therefore impossible for an act to occur through resolve alone, without a fresh intention arising in the agent. Thus, created things could not come into being through such a will, even supposing that events could arise without a cause. How much more so when that too is inherently impossible? Thus, the impossibility arises both from the will and from its being determined by something that is inherently impossible.

The second is their claim that the will selects one of two equivalent alternatives over the other. This is a denial of the obvious. Rather, the will can only be directed towards something whose existence the agent prefers to its nonexistence, either because he knows it to be better or because his love for it is stronger. And in his knowledge it is preferable only because